Golden
by lucia marin
Summary: They retreat slowly, deeper into the darkness of the verandah, the scent of sex and magnolias, the throb of fireflies waiting outside in the thick night." A tragic, beautiful romance between two survivors of a very different nature.PL
1. Interlude

Chapter two. Disclaimer, don't rip me off, thanks to all who like it, etc. etc. For your pleasure and mine, here's another round. Enjoy.

Luce

Trying 

"It's easy to be brooding, angry, pessimistic, sad, whatever. I mean, if you're pretty like me," types Peyton, "you can be anything you want and act as bitchy as you want and no one will consider you a loser or a freak. You'll just be mysterious like I am. The perks of popularity."

She grins to herself, thinking this, then again, turns pensive. Her fingers tap the keyboard.

"I guess it'd have to be harder to be like my friend Brooke. She keeps a smile on regardless and drives a hard bargain. She keeps moving, and as long as she's moving her sadness can't catch up to her. Sometimes even when I hate her, I know she's braver than me."

She looks at the words she's written on her screen. 

She was always horrible at English compositions. Write a personal essay about the role you play in society and how people respond to it. Compare and contrast it with someone's you know. That was the steaming sack of horseshit assignment.

But smart Peyton, hard Peyton knows she can never turn this is. Nothing is safe, nothing is private. This could get out so easily.

With one click, she deletes every single word.

Honesty, she thinks, is overrated.

Instead, she clicks on New Document.

My role in society is as a teenager, she types.

Bland but appropriate. Safe.

Lucas sends her little stuff on email. Funny pictures of mullets. Assignments she needs help with. Links to good sites for finding music and vinyl. Stuff that makes her laugh. 

Somewhere in his infinite wisdom he knows not to writer her yet. They both know she's still scared, still unsure, still caution. Peyton is a compulsive lock double checker.

So he reaches out, sending little waves of warmth, little unspoken invitations. Let me love you, he's saying to her, and she's not sure if she's ready to do that yet.

But she's so afraid she'll lose, that one day he'll be gone for good.

Lila Slater only eats salad for lunch, and stares pointedly at Peyton's pepperoni pizza. She tosses her pale blonde hair and blinks her pale eyelashes.

"Jesus, Peyton, do you know how many calories there are in that? What's with the passive aggressive behavior? You've got Angela over here drooling up buckets. You know she has problems with this, you could try being a little kinder and not flaunting it in front of her face."

The aforementioned Angela sits frozen and red in embarrassment.

Peyton shrugs, brushing off Lila like a horsefly. She is ravenous today for some reason. And everytime she thinks of last night, of her hands on herself, of the boy watching her, she becomes even hungrier. But she's not worried. She has her mother's metabolism, to everyone's envy. Lila does not appreciate the reaction. She watches disgustedly, masking her hunger, pretending not to care.

 Peyton devours the pizza, smacks her lips together, and gives the a-ok sign lazily.

"Bue-niss-imo," she grins slowly, leaning back in her chair.

Torturing Lila Slater is one of the only small pleasures she has. After all, she tells herself smugly, someone has to do it.

She's early in the gym, half an hour before practice. She knows she's been slacking and she wants to get her motions for Aggressive! in order before practice.

She's wearing loose sweats that hang low on her hips and a wifebeater, more of the typical guy practice uniform. Then again, Peyton never was a cute-little-spandex practice pants with Cheer! Written across the ass-kind of girl.

Besides, she knows it's strangely attractive to boys, taking their clothing and making it so provocative. And Peyton knows she has to keep up the image. It's all in a day's work.

But she's not alone. Figures. He's there, Lucas, the Midas boy, turning shots into gold. The net swishes slightly. She sinks against the wall, sliding down quietly, just watching him. His movements are graceful. Nathan played a more aggressive, hard-balling, rough and tumble kind of ball. He bulldozed his way through. But Lucas is the master of evasion, slick and mobile, lean and quick as a flash. 

Frankly, it turns her on.

The thump of the ball begins to form a rhythm combined with the quiet cadence of her breathing, giving a form to her thoughts.

From under half lowered eyelashes, she studies the curve of his spine, the broadness of his back, the sharp curves of muscle and skin, the way the fabric seems to guard what's hiding underneath.

This all could've been hers, she could have held it, abused it, touched it, had it touch her. But he had wanted something else.

She sighs in frustration. She knows he is in the right and she is in the wrong.

But as she opens her eyes, she receives a quick jolt at seeing him right in front of her.

He grins.

"Come to watch me play?"

She shrugs, hiding her smile.

"Come to watch me cheer?"

They both allow timid smiles. 

"Guess we both need extra practice," she says lightly, standing to her feet, enjoy the way his eyes skim over her.

His mouth suddenly breaks into a smile, revealing a nice row of even teeth. 

"How about we switch? Today I'll be the cheerleader and you be the ballplayer. Here, you teach me a cheer, and I'll teach you to shoot."

She grins incredulously.

"Are you serious?" she chuckles. She's not used to being goofy. This kind of playing hasn't been in her world since she was little. She's almost forgotten how it feels to just joke around, to be natural, to enjoy something. "Fine, you first."

She demonstrates, and he does a fair job following, although he cannot resist a pretty good Brooke impression at the end that sends her into gales of laughter. Swaying his hips, he tosses her and flirtatious look and checks his lipgloss in an imaginary mirror.

Then he pulls her into the middle of the court, into a streak of blinding sunshine. She can see the dust particles floating in the air like stars; she is blinded for a second before he nudges her to the side and his face comes into focus again.

"Hardest thing about afternoon basketball practice," he is saying. "Run into one of those lightspots when you're trying to make a shot and you'll miss by a mile. It's the window design really."

He's rambling and it's kinda cute.

He gives her the ball and steps behind her. She can't see him, but she can feel him over her right shoulder and much to her surprise, she realizes she's a tad nervous. 

She tosses the ball and misses by a mile.

"Peyton, Peyton," he sighs. "Impatient. Here, let me show you."

His hand come around her, although they don't touch her. She takes the ball from one of them, and holds it uncertainly.

"Raise your arms," he commands gently, and a tiny shiver runs through her.

"Yes sir."

"Now put your palms here and here," he says, and his words send something through her again. She suppresses another shiver.

"Look straight at what you want. What do you want?"

"To make it, coach," she says softly, not even knowing what they are talking about anymore.

"Put all your strength into it, and then just let it go. Release," he whispers, and lets go of her hands. She crouches, flinging herself into it, keeping her eyes on it, and stops in complete shock as she watches it drop through the hoop.

"I did it," she whispers, turning to him. He's unnervingly close.

"And all you had to do was try," he replies gently, unsure of his own words, trying to tell her  something, but her wide, surprised eyes are too much for him and her thin, sullen lips and her slender throat take the words from his mouth and leave him silent like a child.

They stand there as the ball bounces a few times, listening to the soft thumping sound.

People are coming in and the moment is over.


	2. Midas

Hey everyone, this is my first one tree hill fic. I understand most people hate Peyton, and I hate the way the show portrays her too but it made me curious because I imagined a whole world behind her. There's so much they're not saying so I took it and added a twist. It involves all characters, but it's mostly from Peyton's perspective, and it's really a Peyton-Lucas romance, a mental/sensual/difficult type of affair…..but the pairing could change soon.

But then all love is

Luce

Midas

Click. Click. Click.

The web cam window wobbles for a moment, coming sharply into view. In front of it is a girl, nonchalantly trying to light up. She looks at the lighter, a little frustrated, and tries again.

Click. Click. Flame.

Satisfied, she takes a hesitant little drag, enough to start the burn on the cigarette. She coughs, two short hacks, and teary eyed, proudly stubs it out and tosses is in her Diet Coke.

From the background, a squeal. The face of a redhead suddenly comes into view, coming closer, than receding, smiling widely, sensuously.

"Hey you got it to work! You are totally an exhibitionist. I bet there's all these pervs watching you right now."

The screen wobbles again while the other girl rolls her eyes. She clicks a button and the loud guitars of Social Distortion blare out. The other girl quickly strips off her pants, and starts waving to the screen, hiding behind her hair, smiling sweetly, rolling her hips back and forth, hand on one hip.

"Ok Brooke, you're totally ripping off Mena Suvari in that American Beauty window videotape scene," laughs the blonde, grabbing her friend and sitting her down. Only their faces and shoulders are in view now.

Brooke spins around in her chair and sticks her foot up to the screen.

"Any foot fetishist out there?" she yells, giggling. Her mood swings, and she puts her foot down, grabs a notepad and a pen off the desk and grabs a pair of reading glasses from the nightstad.

"Nerd," she says to the blonde. Then, she clears her throat.

"This is Brooke reporting live on Channel Nine news. Today we're doing a special on web cam girls. Our first subject, Peyton, has agreed to give a glimpse into her life. Peyton, who are you?"

The other girls smoothes down her hair, her smile bright and peppy.

"Well Brooke, I'm a tortured, angsty, rather mediocre artist. I'm also a cheerleader who wants to quit. I also have slept with guys! Now I'm operating a webcam cause subconsciously, I want people to watch me!"

The redhead pretends to gasp, her hand over her mouth. With wide eyes, she turns her head to the screen and shakes is mockingly, making little tsk tsk sounds.

"Well, Peyton, what does it feel like to be a living, walking string of clichés?"

The other girl cocks her head thoughfully for a second, with an important, studious air.

"Can't really say. I've been doing it for so long. I must admit there are times when I enjoy it! After all, all my friends are same."

There is a short tussle and a squeal after this, but the camera shows only pink, fuzzy, flying random limbs.

The two faces pop up again, hair sticking up.

"Would you ever change, Peyton?"

The other girl pretends to concentrate for a moment.

"You know," she smiles blankly, "I don't think I really would. Who would really care if I did?"

The redhead falls silent for a moment.

She tosses down the notebook.

"This is boring now," she says. "Let's go review the new Cosmo."

Her face leaves the picture, and only the blonde girl is there now, staring at the screen.

"How typical of us," she smiles, a little sourly, anger emanating at the screen. 

The webcam wobbles again, and turns off.

Across town, a blonde boy shakes his head and gets up from his computer.

She's alone now, because no matter how hard she tries, everything she touches turns ugly.

She's not like Lucas, who turns everything he touches into gold, into something good. A basketball. An art portfolio. Even Brooke.

She's the angry destroyer, tearing up and down the ranks, leaving corpses in her wake, burning flags and causing conflicts. That's just her style, she guesses.

Even Nathan, when she had him, was disgusting. He was terrible. But as soon as she let him go, he changed. He turned less guarded, more pliable, strangely sincere. She's not surprised. She knows she brings out the worst in people. As soon as she let him go and the Haley girl touched him, he turned to gold.

She's used to being used and using in return; this is a no strings policy, where she doesn't have to leave any significant anything behind. She just takes and they take, and both walk away having lost nothing in the process.

Then Lucas stood in front of her that night and told her to give.

And she was so confused.

The cafeteria at lunch is always packed. Her and Brooke and the other cheerleaders always sit at this table by the window in a better part of the cafeteria. This is how the school is designed, in blocks and quadrants of sociological layers. She remembers walking into the cafeteria freshman year, small and scared, looking at the mad rush around her and feeling a terrible sense of dread. That was the day she resolved she would not be pushed to the side by the whirl of this cyclone. She meant to get in the eye, the calm, whatever it took.

She had Brooke at least. Brooke with her sly smile, her determination, her cash, her quickly rising social status (or open legs), her relentless drive to dominate. She knew Brooke was just as scared as her, scared of being alone, scared of not being wanted. She was grateful for the strange affection Brooke had for her solely, for the friendship that placed her in the safe stratus of the social system.

Of course, no one else knew about the long, lonely afternoons Brooke spent alone in the house. About the revolving door of maids that slept with her father. About the fact that she got 200 dollars for every birthday since she could remember, and Christmases too. No gifts. About the fact that Peyton had been Brooke's only friend since grade school, when Brooke was shy and had thick glasses and braces. No one knew about the hours on end during junior high when they had practiced their cheers, burning to be somebody, burning to belong.

And they'd grown together. They spent hours running, they make protein shakes, they practiced cheers, they taught each other sex techniques, they spread and multiplied their influences until they were on top of the food chain and nothing could ever hurt them again.

But Peyton knows now she was wrong.

Even here she is worth nothing. Even here she is alone. Even here, Brooke understands her no more than she ever has. They both only know the hard loneliness that awaits each one of them outside each other's presence. Even here she has not stopped crying for her mother, for her everlastingly missing father.

This is all she has. She knows soon enough she'll have to leave this too, and then she'll be nobody again. 

Lila Slater is perfect. She is co-captain of the team. She has perfect long, pale blond hair, porcelain skin and a rosebud mouth. She has a mother and father who come to all the games, bringing cookies for the team, going to church together, having breakfast at the country club with Nathan's parents. Peyton hates Lila Slater.

"Anyway, I think this whole Nathan Lucas thing is blow out of proportion. It's all anyone's been able to talk about forever, and I'm sick of it. I mean, if they were celebrities they'd totally be Paris and Nicky Hilton. I bet they made the whole conflict up just to get attention and social status," Lila is saying.

All Peyton can hear is the muted roar of the cafeteria.

"We never hear about anything else interesting. I mean, besides Peyton and Brooke's sexcapades," continues Lila, in that sweet, sly tone of voice.

Peyton can see Brooke cringe a little under the sexy smile and fake bravado she plasters on her face.

"I'm a contented girl, Lila. But it doesn't sound to me like you are. Perhaps, if you'd like to live vicariously through me, I'll tell you what I did last weekend," says Brooke smoothly.

Lila tosses her pale blond hair over her shoulder, slick waterfalls of it.

"No thank you," she says coolly, with that disgusting hint of a southern accent. "I don't think it'd be very classy of me."

With that, Lila and her cohorts exit, leaving Peyton and Brooke facing the rest of the table, who is watching them closely for signs of weakness.

Instead of leaving, Peyton and Brooke do what they have always done. Bending their heads close together, they whisper confidentially and smile mockingly, excitedly, hooding their blank eyes from the careful stares directed at them. As always, they achieve the desired effect: every girl at the table feels less cool suddenly, wishing they were in on the secret.

But Brooke and Peyton know they'll never have what Lila has. She's never had to sleep with anyone to get somewhere.

Their arms move in perfect tandem, while the pompoms make a sound like falling rain, like autumn leaves.

"H-o-t-t-o-g-o, the Ravens, are hot to go."

Clap. Spread Eagle. Cheer, cheer, cheer, smile a huge Vaseline on the teeth smile, shake those pompoms, flirt the skirt, do a slow cartwheel so everyone can check out your legs, your ass. 

No wonder so many of these chicks have eating disorders, thinks Peyton.

These are Friday nights.

The only pleasure she derives is watching Lucas, the way he slides around the court, the  jaguar slink of his muscles, the lanky-hipped, loose jointed way his body moves so quickly, like a quiet jungle cat. She likes the lean muscle on his arms, the tautness of his jaw when he concentrates, the way he never looks at her at all.

He only looks at the ball, he only looks at the basket.

This way, she is free to watch him.

And she appreciates that.

Of course, Brooke is watching him too. She's known Brooke long enough to remember how Brooke hurts her, and comes begging for forgiveness. Her survival instinct, her drive to conquer, to always be on top sometimes overrides even her friendship with Peyton. No matter. Peyton has never really trusted her anyway.

Besides, she doesn't even know what she wants.

She remembers clearly what she wanted the night of Nathan's party, the distinct, painful need to be possessed, to give something, to take and take from him and fill up that space that he had clawed out in her. She remembers the sharp thrum of want.

For now, she's content to watch him and pretend that he is still perfect, that he could never harm her, and the possibilities are still open. Lucas. Her tongue wraps around the word silently, before she realizes Brooke is watching her.

She turns away abruptly.

This is me, she thinks.

It's evening, and her room is lit dimly, resplendent in shadows. Her work is back up on the walls. She knows it's mediocre at best, but she's willing to be proud of it if that means that she'll improve her self esteem a tad. She could use more of that.

She steps up to her mirror, forgetting the web camera that she's left on.

Something slow and dark is playing. Velvet Underground maybe. She'd never let on, but she likes some of that slow, old stuff a lot. Still dark of course. Less anger though, more sadness.

She has no way of knowing that there is a blond boy in his room right now, watching her silently, feeling a cold sense of loneliness that emanates from the screen.

She sits in front of the mirror, folding her hands in her lap for a second. She closes her eyes, thinks of her mother, and says "Peyton," outloud. Her name. Peyton. This is my name.

Opening her eyes, she slowly peels off the camisole she is wearing and lowers her arms again. Her small breasts are nestled in a little beige slip of a bra with slightly worn lace trim. It's gotten too small for her. But she doesn't have money to throw away on lingerie, especially not now that Nathan isn't around to care or to give her money.

Her shoulders hunch a little awkwardly, bringing her collarbones in stark relief. She knows she should eat more. But sometimes she doesn't care about anything, particularly food. She's too miserable. And then there are the constant admonitions of Lila and the coach.

"Guys, remember Bring it On. Like they said, we're cheerleaders. We throw people in the air and fat people don't go as high. So just remember, the town is watching so you should literally be watching your ass."

Stupid Lila.

She tries to pinch an inch around her waist, without much success.

In his room, Lucas smiles sadly, chuckling a little at her morose expression reflected in the mirror.

She turns to the side, studying her profile carefully.

He feels something warm inside him, clawing it's way out, something spreading. She is so beautiful.

She pulls her hair back from her face, brushing it neatly, pulling at the snarls. Pulling open a drawer she takes out a pair of pearl studs and jabs them through her ears. She stands up straight, smiling gently.

"My name is Peyton," she says outloud again, her tone surprisingly gentle and polite.

He watches her, mesmerized, confused.

She is staring at the webcam. She's quickly coming toward it, a fuzzy, skin colored image, and her face comes into focus, pale and sharp.

"I know you're watching," she says simply, and the screen goes blank.

He falls back in his chair, frozen.

She sits on her bed and wraps her skinny arms around her bare stomach. A tiny smile spreads over her mouth, starting at a reluctant corner, as she pulls her lanky knees to her chest.

"I like that you're watching," she whispers, to no one.


	3. The Endangered Girl

Hey everyone! Thanks for all the love, and for trying this out even though peyton's not the easiest character to feel sympathy for. But again, you guys are great so here's another chap. For your enjoyment. Hope you like it :-}

luce

The harsh, ugly music is pounding through the walls, rattling her windows, making the little porcelain knicknacks on her desks tremble and clink.

She's dancing for the webcam, shimmying and undulating, twisting, flirting, hair floating around her in s sort of dizzy slow motion as though she were underwater. She grins, her thin lips curving sensuously, her arms flung up, her eyes burning, piercing through cyberspace.

She falls down in the chair in front of the screen, breathless, face pale and dead serious. With calm, measured, mocking movements she opens a book laying by her screen. She clears her throat.

"Reviving Ophelia," she says, pointing to the cover, smirking at the camera with a  trace of a laugh in her solemn, teacherish tone. "And I quote," (here she clears her throat, brushing a damp strand of hair away from her face), "today's girl is in serious danger, her sexuality being pushed and peddled for society to use as they please."

She snaps the book shut, and her wide eyes approach the screen solemnly.

"Lest we do something about it, soon our teenage girls will become mass media property."

She pushes back in her chair, spinning around once, her laughter spilling out into the room. Lightning quick, she reaches towards the screen and it goes black.

The music stops.

The first bell rings for morning period, where hordes of sleepy eyed teens pour through the hallways and disperse mechanically until there is nothing but emptiness and all the doors click shut. This is first period. The neon lights in the dim hallway flicker.

She's running, having slept late again. She tears through the parking lot, parking next to Brooke's car in her assigned spot, pulling her books out the back, slamming the door shut when she suddenly stops in her tracks.

There is a girl in Brooke's car, head slumped over, still strapped in her seatbelt.

And, well, it doesn't take a genius to deduce that it's Brooke.

She sighs again. Something hot and painful is growing in her chest.

She flings the door open, unstrapping the seatbelt, shaking the redhead. Brooke is giggling. The tight thing in her throat explodes and she screams, "Jesus Brooke," so loud, she imagines the whole school hearing it and crowding up the windows. One quick look assures her no one gives a flying crap. She slaps Brooke, and stops, shocked at what she has done. Her hand is still on Brooke's cheek, as though forgetting to disconnect.

Brooke is staring at her blankly. Her teeth clamp onto the girl's hand in a flash, eliciting another scream.

"What the fuck, Brooke! You just bit me!"

The other girl giggles.

Peyton is suppressing tears. She shoves Brooke over to the passenger seat, revving the engine.

"I'm taking you home," she says, but no one is listening.

She succeeds in dragging Brooke up to her room, a room that's strangely clean and organized, almost to the point of indicating something abnormal. Dumping her on the bed, she sees the open bottle of Stolichnaya vodka and groans. Figures. She makes Brooke drink a glass of water and swallow a charcoal pill from the oft used packet. She takes the girl's keys and leaves her half asleep, tearing back to class, but she knows it's too late to go to first period. She sits in the parking lot in Brooke's car, and feels a strange stinging in her eyes that she brushes away with annoyance.

Whatever.

It's not like this hasn't happened before.

But no one's ever caught her before.

She looks up in surprise at the knock on her window. And he's there, Lucas the reliable, Lucas the wonder boy who she never knows how to treat. She stares ahead sullenly, wishing she was rude enough to ignore him.

Then it dawns on her, maybe she is. As a matter of fact, she knows she is. 

So she says nothing and stares straight ahead, hands clenched on the steering wheel, much to his puzzlement. He walks away after hesitating, seeming somehow disturbed.

And so, Peyton feels better. "Anger displacement is what they call it," she whispers to no one in particular, resolving subconsciously to make the world suffer today. Then again, she thinks wearily, how would this be different than any other day?

She goes and gets Brooke at lunch, who is now more or less sober and silent for once. The say nothing on the way there. There are dark circles under her eyes, and her unfailingly smiling mouth is still and drawn. But when they park, she squares her shoulders, standing up straight slowly. She pulls down the mirror, and Peyton watches as she applies concealer again, carefully paints her lips in cherry red, and turns to Peyton. Automatically, her magnetic smile flashes on, a blinding million watts.

"I'm good now. Let's go!" she giggles, hopping lithely out of the car, swinging her hips as she strides toward the doors.

Peyton sighs. She wishes suddenly she had Brooke's autopilot to function on, her capability to reconstruct herself again and again out of ashes, lipstick and determination. Not everyone is so gifted at being selectively oblivious, she remembers, and follows her friend.

At lunch they sit with Lila Slater and the cheer crew as always. But this time, while everyone chatters and giggles and nibbles lettuce, she sits rather silently and watches Lucas out of the corner of her eye. He sits with the ball team now, by Nathan's invite (command?) and hangs out with that guy….what's his name…the nice one with brown hair? that stuck with him at the beginning of the season. She's watching him because she likes the way he smiles, the way he seems so content, the way he doesn't seem to resent that he's been cheated out of so much. Not like her.

For once, she thinks, it would be nice to have somebody take care of me instead. Like he did at that ass-awful party.

To have someone to protect her from people like Lila Slater who know the chinks in her armor and find ways to sink needles into them.

But then again, what would Brooke do without her? Become as hard as Lila? Drink herself into Betty Ford?

She'd hate to be responsible for that ugly event. It'd be just one more bad thing happening because of her. God knows she's got too many of those already.

She doesn't realize she's been staring, and when she sees him smile back, her cheeks go pale and she turns away. 

Lila Slater chews on a carrot and eyes her nonchalantly, her tone insinuating.

"What was that all about, Peyton?"

She feels a stab of fear.

"Since when do I tell you anything, Lila?" she replies nonchalantly. 

"So what, did you do him or something? Was he any good?"

Her lips are white under the peach lipstick.

"Why is everything sex to you Lila? You seem to have an unhealthy preoccupation with my love life," Peyton grins innocently, slowly biting into a Mars bar without breaking eye contact with the blonde girls. "If you must know, we have not had any kind of relations but if you'd like me to tell him you're open for business, I could do that for you."

Lila takes a little too long to retort, and someone snickers. She tosses a napkin on her salad and stands up, for the second time this week. 

"Ladies, shall we?"

And three of them flounce off, while Peyton lets out a slow breath of relief, flashing a dazzling smile to anyone watching.

She's won this round, but the fear never leaves, the fear that one day they'll all turn on her like a pack of dogs for the kill. It's liable to happen to anyone. After all, this is high school. She puts down the rest of the Mars bar, feeling sick all of a sudden. She's falling behind, soon there'll be an extra inch on the stomach, then a wrong move in a cheer, then a rumor, and then it'll be all over. Her heart is pounding thickly in her chest.

But then she looks at him and sounds of the cafeteria fade out, and watching his smile, suddenly she forgets those things and nothing really seems to matter, from Brooke's tug on her arm to anything Lila might say. She smiles back again. Yes, it's time. For once, she'd suddenly like to just give in and give up.

But she knows she's halfway lying.

She sits on the ball court by the river, watching him play. It's a new habit of hers. She finds it relaxing, sitting on the warm cement in the fall sunlight, Brooke in the background jabbering with the nerds on the stands, offering to hook them up (benevolent queen behavior), watching him too. Peyton doesn't worry though. She just watches him play. It's the only thing that turns her on lately. 

When he's done, long after everyone's gone, they sit together on the rickety bleachers.

"So you see, when they sold him it screwed up their defense, which means they left a gap for the competition, which means March Madness was all screwed up, which means…..you couldn't give less of a damn……."

She laughs, flipping a quarter repeatedly, watching it go up and down.

"I like watching you get all excited about something. It's like watching a kid in a candy store, analyzing the best combination, thinking of how he can squeeze in the perfect ratios of his favorites to the new experimental pieces that look good."

"Complex way of saying I like basketball."

"Nothing is as simple as it looks," she grins.

"Starting in with the time honored obvious statements, Dr. Phil? Or trying to tell me something?" he teases, snatching her quarter from midair. She snaps her gum twice, and he can almost taste the peppermint and her strawberry gloss.

"Mock me if you will. It's the perennial truth. Hey, Lila Slater's got the hots for ya," she grins, snatching the quarter back.

"Um, someone's been watching I Love the 80's. The hots?"

She shoves him lightly. She likes how she's gotten used to this easy camaraderie, being able to joke without thinking of those other things. Like sex.

"Yep. Watch out, she's dangerous to refuse. Remember that episode of American Dreams where JJ gets sent to Vietnam cause he turns down the officer's wife?"

His eyes widen in mock fear.

"That bad?"

"Yep."

"Are you recommending I sleep with her? Because you know very well I'm not capable of doing that."

She mimics a shocked little gesture.

"Well, Viagra's pretty cheap online these days. Don't feel bad. It happens to a lot of guys."

He narrows his eyes at her, snatching her quarter and holding it hostage while she laughs, unsuccessfully trying to wrestle it back.

"I assure you I'm perfectly capable of doing the dirty deed, but I'd be incapable of forgiving myself."

She stops giggling, looking down.

He feels he's said something wrong, and tries to reconcile by gently returning the quarter.

"So what, you're like this virgin saint or something?" she mocks, and instantly regrets her tone.

He realizes he's somehow offended her, and remembers her dicey past and keeps his mouth wisely shut.

She looks at him, surprised.

He shrugs.

"No way! Lucas the virgin?"

"Shut up," he answers, less playful somehow.

"A guy like you?"

His eyebrows scrunch down in a sort of offended expression.

"What do you mean, a guy like me. Am I supposed to have a lot of sex or something?"

She draws back, a little subdued.

"I just meant….it's different." She hesitates, and bites her lip. "Um, that night with me, you didn't seem…."

He shrugs again, absently this time, detached.

"Maybe I just liked you is all. Maybe that's all it takes to make something like that good. Maybe I was just waiting for someone not like Lila Slater to come along."

He stands up, and she does too quickly, afraid she's pissed him off somehow. She's had practice in keeping men happy and maybe believes it's all she's good for somewhere in the back of her head, in a secret place she doesn't know exists.

But his smile is still sweet, though somewhat more awkward. She doesn't know what to say, and for the first time since she can remember she realizes she's blushing. Her, Peyton, blushing. So this is what it's supposed to be like, whispers something in her mind, and in the dusk, she feels a little delirious.

"I have to go," he says softly. "It's late."

"Yes. Late. I mean, I'll see you later."

She departs rapidly, and he sighs, wishing he'd kept his mouth shut.


	4. Potential

It's eight o clock, and as always, he's watching.

Chhaaaapppter four! Is here. They're making progress, wouldn't you say?

Ps. Thanks to all the people who reviewed this so thoughtfully, helping me improve and encouraging me. You're the sweetest. And to anyone else, criticism or any kind of opinion is welcome, should you feel like leaving me a line :-) I love the world today!

Enjoy

Luce

Potential

The screen flickers on, and her face draws back from it. She pulls out a sketchpad and starts drawing, pouring her (as always) angst filled thoughts (rather less than brilliantly) on paper.

She puts it down after a minute, leaning back, cheek cradled in her hand. She taps the pencil on the desktop.

Tonight is not a very exciting night.

The screen flashes. Someone is in her chat room.

"No fireworks tonight?" says the message.

She grins.

"Lucas," she types in quickly.

"And psychic. Such a talented girl."

She rolls her eyes, tossing the sketchpad aside.

"Look, I've reminded you before that I'm not deluded. I don't actually think my drawings are good. I'm not that pathetic yet."

There is a pause, where she can almost hear him chuckle.

"I don't think they're that great either," says the line that pops up on the screen.

She gasps, laughing. 

"Lying asshole," she types. "You tricked me."

"Only because I wanted to improve your self esteem!!! Besides, they hired you anyway, didn't they."

She shrugs, tapping the keyboard.

"Maybe they saw potential," she writes back, and waits for a minute. The screen is blank.

"Maybe that's what I see too."

She stares at his reply for a bit, and raises her fingers to type.

But he's already logged out.

It's that time of the month again, she thinks, groaning.

Pep rally.

And if there's anything Peyton is definitely lacking, it's pep. Brooke on the other hand, has been guzzling Red Bull since breakfast and looks ready to take on the whole team, Matrix style. She's flitting around, fluffing up people's bangs, and making sure everyone's wearing spankypants under their pleated skirts (the administration insists on these mandatory checks since an incident during last fall's pep rally that one will ever forget). It's exhausting just to watch her. Peyton feels like she needs to sit down.

But Bouncing Brooke is hightailing it in her direction.

In the stands, she sees Hailey James sitting with a few other girls on the bleachers, laughing. She finds herself suddenly envious. She can't say why really. After all, Hailey and her friends as free-floaters in the social stratus, liked by everyone, never really belonging to anyone. They wouldn't be called popular exactly.

Then again, Peyton realizes, that must be a very comfortable existence.

She watches them talking earnestly, jabbing each other, laughing in a genuine and unrestrained way, oblivious to the little displays of social climbing and backbiting around them. Sighing, she spits out her gum in another girl's pompom and feels a little better.

The band is starting to play. The brass horns are making the air vibrate. 

"Time to go ladies," she hears Brooke yelling, and all of a sudden they're all pouring out onto the court, cartwheeling, cheering, shaking their pompoms and other vital assets.

They split into neat rows with practiced precision.

"All you people in the stands,"

Clap, clap, clap-clap-clap-clap.

"Stand up, and clap your hands!"

The response is deafening. The bleachers shake.

"If you think you got the beat,"

More clapping.

"Stand up and stomp your feet!!!"

The floor is literally vibrating. The blue and white skirts flip and twirl, the pounding of feet echoes in unison, and suddenly the pump-it-up jock jams music comes on and the cheers break out in a mass roar at ear splitting decibels.

"How sad," thinks Peyton and half of the student body.

But she's too busy coordinating hand motions, doing handsprings and tossing up 100 pound Lila Slater. She puts a little extra force into this, wishing she could toss her high enough to splat her against the ceiling.

Then the ballplayers run out, ripping through the newsprint banner, and the Cawing erupts from the entire jock section.

"Go Ravens!!!! GOOOOOOOO RAVENS!!!'

They run in a line, holding up the poms and shaking them, that sound again like rain. The players each run through the tunnel as their name is called, and Nathan definitely takes the prize for most female screaming in the stands. Peyton is struggling to hold back a laugh.

The girls are off to one side now, spinning slowly, moving in sync, arms up, arms down, like a sort of slow hip swinging dance to the cocky big brass music which has an oldies jazz flair to it now. They're just there for eyecandy now. The team is all anyone cares about.

After all this, Brooke generously imparts some of her mom's valium to calm down all the ephedrine-amped girls so they won't be jittering in their desks the rest of the day.

Peyton admires Brooke's unselfishness and takes two, thank you very much, washed down with Diet Coke.

At lunch, they're all still in their uniforms (as required) to the pleasure or disgust of the student body. They sit amid their pompoms, chattering and giggling wildly, drinking Diet whatever, and someone's (inevitably) French braiding someone else's hair. "Paradise" thinks Peyton, chuckling morosely, chomping down on the noodle and gravy special. Lila Slater is once again staring in disgust. Or envy. Take your pick.

"Oh my God, Peyton. That is disgusting. You have noodle gravy on your chin."

Peyton grins, chomping down on the chicken patty accompanying the yellow noodly mess. Brooke winks at her quickly, and then turns towards Peyton fully with a shocked expression.

"Um, Peyton, that IS disgusting. You're putting that stuff away like there's no tomorrow."

All the cheerleaders stop to look at this impossibility; is Brooke turning against Peyton? Shocking!

"Well, Brooke, it won't have any long term effects, if you know what I mean," says Peyton nonchalantly, chugging some Coke and burping.

Brooke gasps.

Lila Slater leans forward, eyes glittering, enjoying this immensely. The cheerleaders wait with baited breath.

"Wait. Are you saying……you're on the Lila Slater diet?"

Lila is suddenly sitting straight and rigid now, cheeks pale.

"What's that, Brooke?" answers Peyton, making the line sound purposefully rehearsed.

"Why, you know, when you barf up everything you eat!!!" replies Brooke cheerfully, delivering the punch line. The table explodes in howls of laughter.

Lila Slater dumps her tray and walks off.

Peyton and Brooke are laughing, chucking cherry tomatoes at each other, while the cheerleaders shake their heads in amusement, a few of them looking extremely uncomfortable. A couple even run after Lila, but Peyton knows she's won this round again and there's nothing to fear for a while. Flushed with triumph, she turns in her seat, and that's when she catches Lucas' eye. 

He's staring at her solemnly, almost remorsefully, and that hunger that she's welcomed all week suddenly disappears again. Shot down, she turns a little haughtily back in her seat, trying to regain her dignity. But she's a little nauseous now, and really doesn't understand how she could've possibly been enjoying the gray heap on her place.

She hates that she even cares about what he thinks.

She wishes she could go over there and ruin his lunch right back.

"Have you always been so mean?"

They are walking along the river on the cobblestone street, and the day is slowly turning into dusk. There is a sharp autumn chill in the air, and the falling leaves circle them and rush off in the wind, dropping lifeless by their feet. His face is rather odd, a strange expression she hasn't seen before. They were talking about something else, something light and non-controversial before he burst in with this little dose of reality. She avoids his eyes, wanting to say something mean, but there's something inside her throat that tightens and the words come out of her mouth before she can stop them.

"No," she whispers, and she hides her stinging eyes.

All of a sudden she feels so disgusting, wondering what he thinks of her, and she hates him for being so good and so right all of the time.

She wants to push him away, to genuinely hate him for this but she needs him around too much. She tries to swallow her pride.

But she's sniffling now, and stunned, he stops her and puts his hands on her shoulders.

On the river, a chill wind blows. The sky is purple and lavender tinged with pale layers of blue, dropping into a velvety dark on the horizon. Her hair hangs in her face, masking her eyes. 

"Peyton, no don't cry I'm so sorry please I didn't mean to make you…look I didn't mean to sound like that, c'mon give me a break I don't know what to do when girls cry," he rambles, feeling horrible all of a sudden. He's aware of the fact she feels guilty enough without Lucas the Saint pointing out her fallacies.

She crosses her arms tight against her stomach, wiping at her nose, then sullenly looking down.

"Easy for you to say who's never had to fight for survival against Lila Slater every day of your life, since we were in grade school. Bet you've never been called a slut by the Christian Coalition homecoming queen."

Her words are raw and forceful but also private and revealing. She's never extended this kind of invitation to him before, to be part of her life, to understand her.

He wants to reply, to reassure her, but before he can speak she's already taken off down the street, towards her car, away from him. 

It's evening.

She opens her webcam room, and tonight he's there, and he's sent her a little message. It's a picture of a very depressed looking mutt with jowls hanging down to the ground, declaring "I've been a dog to you." She tries not to smile, but it really is kinda cute.

Her smile fades away. 

"My name is Peyton," she whispers again, like that first night. "You wanna really see Peyton? You like Peyton? Have Peyton. Everybody else already has. Don't lie to yourself."

Stepping up gently to the camera, she slowly takes her shirt off, sliding it over her long arms. In his room, he winces at the sharpness of her collarbones.

She's slowly unsnapping her bra.

He logs off immediately, quickly sending a message.

All it says is Don't.

She's trembling in front of the screen.  She's throwing herself at him and he doesn't want her because she is a common slut. "This is Peyton," she repeats, before throwing herself on the bed, crying like a child having a temper tantrum, pounding the pillows, kicking her feet, yelling I hate you!!!!!! Again and again.

When she gets up, feeling stupid, she wipes the tears from her eyes and looks up at the screen again.

There' s another message from him there.

All it says is , "This is not Peyton."

She's still crying now, but she's smiling too, some weird form of hysterics. Half sobbing, half hiccupping, trying to smile, she kisses her fingers and presses them to the screen, and then it goes black.


	5. Evening Rhapsody

The evening throbs quietly with the muted sounds coming from the gymnasium, and with a hiss and a click the streetlights turn on. They flood the town with a deep orange light that penetrates the purple dusk, turning the streets into long catwalks dappled in shadows.

She is right under one, slouching in the driver's seat, and when the bulb flinches twice and snaps on, it's as though she is the actor on the stage whom the spotlight pins.

She stands there still, like a dancer awaiting the music, the cue.

Slowly her hand raises up to her mouth, the glowing firefly tip of the cigarette lights up, blinded by the buzzing streetlight. The rest of her is motionless.

A thin stream of smoke curls slowly from between her half open lips, descending upwards into the night. 

She's wearing her uniform and white, thin flip flops on her feet, poms and shoes in a neglected pile on the hood.

With the slow, hypnotic grace of a feline, a tiger, she turns her strange, glittering eyes on him. Without seeming to raise a finger, she makes a motion somehow towards him that seems to say, come here. And drawn by the picture she is painted in, he feels himself magnetically drawn to this terrible girl who languorously drops her cigarette, and stubs it out with two precise twists of her foot.

They say nothing. An insolent, sleepy smile is curling on her lips, and her head tilts back slowly, resting on the leather. Her long legs sprawl out, knees together, then a little less, than back together again.

He says nothing.

Her mood seems to change, flickering imperceptibly like the streetlight.

She jumps to her feet, her smile welcoming, and hurriedly grabs her shoes, pulling socks on her feet.

"Hey there point guard," she grins. He is mesmerized by the sudden change for a second, then shrugs it off. He picks up a pompom and turns it slowly in his hands as though it is diseased. He shakes it a little, feigning fear at the rustling sound. He looks at it closer, and then pretends it is choking him. With both hands, he grabs it and flings it off, wiping imaginary sweat off his brow. She's laughing without abandon, and he loves it when he hears her laughing like that, this choky giggly smoky laugh.

"I knew those things were evil. You know you can't see your hands when you're holding them because they're so massive? When I was little I thought pompoms ate whoever's hand grabbed them and that all the cheerleaders didn't have hands, just these big fluffly blue and white things."

She shakes her head, taking a deep breath.

"You're so weird," she giggles, pulling herself up and slamming the door shut. "Let's go or you'll be late and Brooke with carve me up and serve me with Calorie-Free Ranch."

She grabs his hand, half running half walking, and drags him along with her, his protests echoing through the empty parking lot.

"And a one. And a two. And-a, one-a, two-a, thhhreeeee-damn it!!!!! Courtney, are you motion dyslexic? Cause I said to the right, not to the left!"

This is Lila.

This is practice.

Brooke's voice is slow and measured, rhythmic, almost like a song. The hands are clapping in slow motion. 

"Ex-tra, ex-tra, reeeeaaaadddallllabbbbouuuuttttit. The-Ra-ven-s are-the-best and there's nnooooddddddoooouubbbtttabouut-it-."

Peyton is slowly swinging her arms, thinking about how to finish some stupid English essay.

"For Christ's sake, Jill, stop acting rhythmically retarded and keep beat! Gina, you need to lose a few pounds or Jamie WILL drop you on the toss. And Laney, so help me god if that nose-ring is real I'll yank it out with my bare hands! People, what IS GOING ON!!!"

Peyton cringes at the sound of Lila's voice." Poor thing must be upset," thinks Peyton maliciously. "She's probably just found out she has a hole in her esophagus. Brooke is gritting her teeth hard enough to do damage to that perfect dental job of hers. And Gina could stand to lose a few pounds, and I can tell, because I have to toss her too."

Then, "Christ, what is with me today?"

She turns around and sees everyone's puzzled face. She pales, wondering what she's said out loud.

"Peyton, did you just say what is with me today?" giggles Brooke.

She sighs in relief.

"I must have."

"You seem really distracted," says Lila in saccharine sweet tones. "I hope it's nothing grave, like an abortion."

The tittering stops.

Peyton opens her mouth to deliver the final blow.

Lucas' face flashes lightning quick before her eyes. 

She walks up to Lila. The other girl is standing her ground, her narrow green eyes barely flickering with a little fear. Peyton is a few good inches taller.

But there is no strike, no blow, no hit.

Instead, Peyton leans down very close to Lila's ear.

"Miss Christian Coalition," whispers Peyton, her tone so low she knows none but Lila can hear it. "You forget last summer I worked in your doctor's office, which would mean I had full access to your file."

Lila is deathly pale and mute.

"Let's keep this between us, shall we?"

And Peyton stands up, eyeing the girls that are in little groups, watching them and whispering.

"Show's over. Brooke, stop grinding your teeth. Gina, you do need to lose two pounds honey cause I don't have that much muscle. Everyone else, stop FUCKIN STARING!!!"

And with that, she marches out of the gym. She throws her stupid poms in her convertible, taking a deep breath.

And she knows it's really corny, but she still feels a little good about herself.

She's home on her bed when the door flings open.

A grinning Brooke throws herself on Peyton's bed.

"What is wrong with you, you psycho?" she laughs, diving on top of Peyton, pretending to strangle her. "First you go schizo, talking to nobody. Then you throw away the perfect chance to destroy Lila Slater, EVERYONE could see you had some dirt on her! Then, you go psycho and march out. Have you been raiding the medicine cabinet?"

Laughing, Peyton throws Brooke off her.

"Hey retard, the webcam's on! There's probably a hundred pervs watching this right now."

Brooke shrugs, blowing a kiss at the screen.

"So are you gonna tell me the dirt on Lila?"

"Nope."

Brooke suddenly turns serious, sitting on the bed.

"Well you know, Peyton, everybody now thinks you might have had something to do with an abortion."

Peyton pales.

"What?"

"Well, from the way the convo went, it sounded as though Lila had hit some sore spot so you blackmailed her into silence. They're wondering, Peyton."

The blond girl sits still for a second, regaining her composure.

Then, a giggle.

Brooke looks at her incredulously.

"Not funny, Peyton. You'll be hailed as the next prom-mom before you know it! This is serious business!!"

But Peyton is grinning.

"You know it's not true. Nathan and Lucas know it's not true. Who else do I give a crap? Nobody. Can't kick me off the squad for a rumor," she shrugs.

Brooke tilts her head, processing this.

"Yeah but,"

"Yeah but what? Do you think the school has a good opinion of us anyway? Besides, all they'll be talking about is what could Lila Slater have possibly done that is BAD?????????"

The two of them erupt into laughter.

Brooke looks at her curiously.

"Hey how come you didn't destroy Lila? And what's with all this sudden laughing and stuff of your own volition?"

"Volition? Geez Brooke don't tell me you've been reading the thesaurus again."

"I couldn't go to sleep! Besides, I was trying to find other ways of saying let's have sex. Technically, there's more than twenty I've found so far."

Peyton rolls her eyes.

"That sounds more like you."

"Thanks," replies the redhead airily, flopping backwards on the bed. "Now answer the question."

Peyton shrugs, staring into nowhere.

"Guess I just don't want to be so mad anymore."

Brooke snaps her gum, examining an unraveling stuffed animal.

"So what, are you going to start hanging out with Hailey now or something?"

"Maybe."

Brooke looks up, her face suddenly incredulous. She crosses her arms across her stomach, and Peyton knows Insecure Brooke when she sees her.

She dives on the other girl, pretending to strangle her, returning the exact favor.

"Silly Brooke. You know you're still my "second on Thunder Road," she says in her loud, corny "Pubescent Nerd" voice that she hasn't done for Brooke in ages. It sends the other girl into gales of laughter just like it always has, every summer at that stupid camp they spent together, everytime Brooke cried on the first night cause she missed home.

Brooke sits up, hair frizzed out.

"Ok, Peyton just made a Grease reference. This is way too weird people. I can't take so much in one day."

She heads towards the door, looking at her friend in wonderment, with a soft sigh.

"It's nice having you back, Peyton. You're almost like you were before……"

Her sentence stops short right there. Peyton's face has fallen back into her sullen mask, eyes sunkenly glaring at Brooke.

"I'm sorry," the other girl says, quickly exiting.

Peyton says nothing, just sits there. The tires of Brooke's car squeal in the driveway and fade in the distance.

Then her mouth wobbles.

"Hey, why don't you say it out loud, huh? Before your MOTHER died!" she yells after Brooke, at nobody really. Nobody is listening. "I hate your stupid, condescending, insensitive ass!!!!" she screams as loud as she can, kicking the door shut with a slam that shakes the house.

Bitterly, she turns towards the computer and furiously shuts off the webcam before the burning, humiliating tears come out.

In his room, Lucas shakes his head slowly. 

He doesn't send a note. He doesn't want her to know he's seen this. It would only make her hate him.

He comes over to her house that evening. 

They sit together on the living room rug, a rug that could use a good vacuuming. He notices little coffee mug circles on the counters, spots on the stove, and a thick layer of dust on the mantel. The loneliness of the place is striking, it's a house without a human touch to keep it alive.  

Self consciously, she rubs at a cigarette burn on the carpet.

"Hey," he smiles gently, "Focus."

Papers are spread out all over the floor, like a snowstorm. Books are piled on the coffee table, and a big red poster board is propped up against the tv. The muted sounds of her "loser rock" filter through the walls from her room, and the toaster dings.

"Dinner is done," she mutters, springing up. She wonders what he thinks of a girl that makes no effort to clean and whose cooking is limited to pop tarts and microwave meals. His mother knows how to do all that stuff so well. Don't guys like that kind of crap? 

But he doesn't seem to mind. He accepts the pop-tarts happily, praising her culinary genius, asking her if she's hand rolled the dough herself, making her smile again. He helps her with her English essay, pulling out the long ignored John Steinbeck and searching for the passages Jake marked for him. Relieved, she constructs a halfway decent essay, and then does all the decorative work on his poster. So she's no genius, but she does have a flair for lettering and a steady hand with the marker. He watches her carefully gluing, examining in almost childlike delight the results, and munching on her pop-tart in a smug, self satisfied manner. He loves watching her, her small idiosyncrasies and jerky movements, her messy hair that's always sitting in a halo around her head, illuminated gold by the lamplight. She takes pleasure in these little attentions he offers, feeling like the star of her own show, and the warmer, more charming things in her personality come out gradually, feeling their way towards daylight tentatively.

  While he's typing up the last of his report, she goes to the kitchen and hesitantly dampens a sponge. She takes a swipe at the stove, and stares at the gleaming black revealed. In two minutes she's cleaned the whole stovetop.

Then he's right by her side, soundlessly in that jungle cat way of his.

"Let me help," he says, and his voice is so kind it almost makes her cry.

He lays out the cleaners for her, and explains each one. He finds a roll of paper towels in the crowded pantry and gives her directions, emptying out countless takeout leftovers from the fridge, vacuuming and washing dishes. Hesitantly, she follows his lead, soon feeling pleased with the white countertops that emerge and the disappearing grime. She turns up the music and finds a mop in the dark garage, wiping down the floor. She ties her hair back and changes into an undershirt, drying the dishes, spraying him with the hose, and dusting off the living room. One hour later, exhausted, they fall down on the couch looking around in satisfaction.

She's just looking at him, unsure of what to say.

"Thank you," she smiles a little.

He shrugs. 

"I do this all the time at home anyway. It's more fun with you here. Besides, you did my poster."

She pushes a damp strand of hair out of her face. She's sitting close enough to him to feel the warmth emanating from his body in the cool room.  She looks down.

"My dad's always gone and I get so caught up in other stuff….we don't really…"

"It's ok," he says simply, and she really all of a sudden feels like it is.

She looks up at him.

He smiles, and wipes a tiny smudge off her face with the back of his hand. It's a casual gesture.

But when he kisses her, it's very slow and measured, careful, as though he's afraid to frighten her again.

Very lightly, his hand lands on the back of her neck  as she lets her head tilt back slowly. Her eyelids droop closed. His mouth is tender and gentle, the kiss more of a promise than a demand. Both of his hands are cradling her cheeks now, and he kisses her forehead. She feels weird and shaky and sad all of a sudden, less in control then she'd like to be. Her kiss is humble, less brash, less self assured. His arms wrap around her slowly, pulling her close, and she burrows her head into his chest, clutching at the warm cotton. Blinking, she fights back tears and swallows then with a vengeance. Her face hardens up again, but it is less angry this time. Something has left permanently.

"I think about you all the time," he's whispering in her hair. "I worry about you being all alone here."

She clenches her fists, and stiffens up a little, leaning away from him.

"I can take care of myself," she says, her voice unsteady. "I've been doing fine on my own for forever and I don't need anyone coming in here and convincing me that I need help because when they leave too, it'll be twice as hard to do it all alone again."

And with this, she stands up rather abruptly.

"I think you'd better go," she tells him, but her voice is not harsh or angry. It's just soft and sad. "It's late and I'm so tired and confused."

He packs his things up  and walks to the door quietly, turning around once outside.

She's lingering in the doorway, her face hidden in the shadows.

"I'm not here to make you weaker, Peyton," he says, voice clear and steady. "I'm just here to lend a hand when you need it. Maybe even teach you something new, something that will make you do even better on your own. No matter how many boys are around, you'll still always be on your own and I'm the only person who respects that. But I won't let you offend me away, push me away, try to make me dislike you. I'm still here, and I'll be here as long as you are. Feel free to make use of me."

She watches him departing, growing smaller and smaller. Without thinking, she hesitantly raises her hand up to her chest and makes a little waving motion.

As though he were psychic, at the same moment he turns around and sees her.

She pulls her hand back, as though burned, and runs inside.

But not before she sees the wide smile on his face, a smile that grows on hers, wider and wider until it hurts and she's can't restrain him. She looks at her sparkling house and all of a sudden there's laughter bubbling up and she's dancing around the living room like a little kid, making little yip sounds and throwing herself on the sofa breathless, biting the cushion. She calms down but the smile doesn't go away; she falls asleep with it plastered on her face, waking up with a cramp in her jaw in the morning.


	6. Thirteen

How Peyton got into serious trouble.

Hmm, she thinks. Dumb title.

How Peyton Gradually Ruined Her Life.

Better.

She taps the keyboard a few times, looking at the buzzing computer screen. She's supposed to be writing an essay, another one for English. Describe something that happened to you once. Try to use foreshadowing, tone, and setting to better describe it. Stupid English. Of course, she's wasting time typing what she really wants to say again.

Her fingers click-clack nimbly over the keys.

"Once there was a girl named Peyton who was really cute. Matter of fact, she was stunning."

She takes a moment to congratulate herself. Thank you very much, she says to the screen, blowing a breezy kiss. Hell, someone has to do it.

"She came home after practice at 6 o clock sharp. The house was always empty. There would be moths and bugs buzzing around the bare bulb on the porch. In the late fall, by that time it would be dark already so she'd hurry to unlock the door. She'd get jumpy, and deadbolt it. The house was quiet and dark. The green carpet was kinda moldy looking, the paneling on the cabinets was less than new and it was generally a mess. A single fluorescent bulb illuminated the gritty countertops and sink full of dirty dishes. So she would ignore it, and go lock herself in her room where it was relatively cleaner. 

Peyton didn't eat because there was never anything to eat because her dad rarely went grocery shopping and she didn't really either. She just drew and did homework. The house was always deathly silent and she shut the curtains because there always seemed to be somebody outside. She would get bored and nervous, wandering around aimlessly, apathetically trying to surf the web, retracing her paths on the carpet, calling Nathan's cell and never getting an answer. Then she'd turn on the loud, jarring music just to block out the quiet, to block out the small creaks of the house.

So when Brooke called and proposed something stupid, she always went, just to get that deafening silence and throat-tightening loneliness as far away from her as she could.

And this is how Peyton Gradually Ruined Her Life."

She rereads the piece, face in her hands. Her hand moves unhesitatingly to the mouse to delete it. Suddenly, her whole body freezes.

What if she turned it in? What if she really did? What would happen?

Stop it, Peyton, she reminds herself harshly. You've already gone over this a million times in your head. You'd probably get in trouble.

She clicks the yes. Save the work? No thank you.

The screen goes blank.

Except that now he comes over sometimes. When he does, he turns on all the lamps and lights up the living room with his smile and praises her for keeping things clean and makes her smile; he checks all the locks for her to make sure she's safe, and puts down all the shades and even rigs up this little intruder scare alarm. And she feels better, but sometimes she wishes he wouldn't have to leave but she doesn't want to say that outloud and scare him because it is irrational.

He even watches movies she picks out sometimes. They're both kung fu fans, and they love Jackie Chan and watch the bloopers over and over and over. He's never brought horror movies though, because he has a hunch that after he leaves they might scare her. She seems to sense this and is grateful and amazed at his intuition.

Once they even do a duet on webcam together, a horrific rendering of Judy is a Punk, smacking their heads together during some impromptu headbanging and falling to the floor in laughter.  When Brooke calls now, Peyton just says her homework's gotten harder and she's too tired, and can't afford to get another tardy slip tomorrow. Brooke usually shrugs it off. Nothing she can do about it. 

She gives the Peyton Lucas thing two weeks max. I mean, c'mon. She's not getting any. She'll be sick of him soon, rationalizes Brooke. After all, doesn't she know Peyton??

But he comes over still, sometimes three times a week.

They sit by the couch, while the previews roll.

"Twizzler or Junior Mints."

"Twizzler. Switch."

"Milk Duds or Sugar Babies."

"Hmm……Sugar Babies. Keep the Duds. Starbursts?"

"Sure. Oh, take the Raisinets."

Pause.

"Raisinets? What the hell?"

"Sorry. I don't know."

Muffled laughing. He props two pillows up behind her back.

"Candy exchange all settled now?"

"Aye aye captain. What's this again?"

"Rumble in the Bronx."

"Classic," she nods. "All the elements are there."

"Hot Asian chicks in granny clothes."

"Check."

"Bad guys with buckteeth and slit eyes coming out of the walls."

"Check."

"Jackie Chan trying to speak English and failing miserably."

"Definitely check. Cult classic. Oh, the popcorn's done."

He springs to his feet. "I'll get it," she hears him say from the kitchen. She can't believe he's related to Nathan.

Unlike every other male she has ever known, he actually lets her watch the movie and she gets to see the end, unlike previous situations where she always misses it because she's in the bedroom. She remembers the first time this happened.

She had been thirteen. John Connell invited her over on a Sunday, and popped in When Harry met Sally because she'd wanted to see it. John Connell was cute, boy-cute with a laissez-faire attitude that he inherited from his businessman daddy; he applied it to every aspect of life. The girls all swooned, but Peyton wasn't sure really. She guessed she liked him. But Brooke and Lila had pushed, pressured her to say yes, took her out shopping, made her buy underwear with lace on them for "good luck". 

She didn't feel good but she went, fearing reprisal from John if she didn't. Last year he'd written Maimie Vandross up on the bathroom wall with "for a good time, call" next to it. No boy had asked her out since. She'd put on her lace underwear, which drooped a little in the back on her skinny behind. Brooke had curled her hair into ringlets, and Peyton had tried to seem disaffected. She succeeded to the point where Lila looked enviously shocked. Lila had never been over to a boy's house without his parents home. Brooke took her mom's Chanel lipstick and smeared it on Peyton's lips, and put mascara on her eyelashes.

They were halfway into the movie when John put his arm around her shoulders. Awkwardly, but grinning, he'd kissed her temple. She turned her head to look at him, a little shocked, and then he'd just kissed her. His mouth was a little wet, and pushed hard on hers, but she liked it a little. They'd kissed for a few more minutes and it was getting nicer, when he stuck his tongue in her mouth. She had wanted to bite it, but she remembered Maimie and just let him kiss her. He'd sort of propped her up against the armrest on the couch, and leaned into her. His body was heavy on hers, and she could hear his hard breathing. His hand fumbled up under her shirt, and then she'd jumped up and they knocked heads. He swore. She'd whispered sorry, and then said she had to go home, and ran down the street to the corner. She'd walked the rest of the way home, two miles on the leafy streets with old houses, and sniffled all the way.

She knew it was stupid, but she kinda wished her first kiss would be something she'd like to remember. 

From then on, she'd never finished a movie. 

She watches the credits roll with a wet gleam in her eye, almost undetectable. But he can sense it, although he does not look for it. Slowly, he finds her hand on the floor and wraps his fingers around it, pressing his palm to hers, watching the screen. She looks up at him quickly, suspiciously, defiantly. He just smiles.

So she leans back and thinks about what it's like to hold someone's hand. How it feels warm and dry and firm, safe. Something trembles and thrills inside her, and she looks down at her own hand curiously, as though amazed something so simple could make her so nervous.

When he presses the remote, the movie screen shuts off, leaving them in darkness. 

They can both feel their hearts beat erratic rhythms. She wonders what he'll ask. She wonders what she'd give. For the first time she doesn't want to throw this away so quickly. She's scared if she does, he'll never want to just hold hands anymore. So when his lips seek out hers, they are unmoving, and he quickly pulls back, puzzled. He tries once again, softer, lighter, a bare touch of a kiss. This time she can't ignore the sweet shiver that slices through her, and her lips barely open, pressing into his, thin and pale against the warm, full ones caressing hers. For the first time, she lets herself taste the little kissable dent, the soft curve, the damp, open space. The darkness is cradling them as they sit there, caught in a long, personal kiss that engulfs them entirely and brushes raw, painful things inside both of them. Her knees softly pull up to her chest and her lips are the only thing she'll give but he doesn't mind.

This is enough for tonight.

When they part, the air between them is charged and silent. They both grin, covered by the blessed darkness and she presses both of her hands to her heart in a strange, odd, movement, as though pushing it back inside her chest like the old fashioned actresses.

"I should go," he whispers.

She walks him to the door, and later curls up in her bed, smiling for the camera, touching her lips, her head laid on her outstretched arm.  Her fragile legs curl up to her chest, the bruises visible on her knees. She stretches out slowly, her hair slowly cascading over the side of the bed, arching her back a little, running fingertips lightly over her ribs. Her smile is faint, at a corner of her mouth, and her eyelids are lowered and seductive, eyes smiling in an innocent paradox. She looks like a thirteen year old who might have just been kissed for the first time, luxuriant in the new sensation, touching her ankle, her mouth, incredulous and deliriously in love with herself and the world.

She stares dead on at the camera, slowly turning on her side, letting her hair fall in her eyes, letting a strap slide off her shoulder, smiling her secret smile for him. She ignores all the catcalls and im's popping up on the screen, all the chat invites, everything but the eyes she knows are watching her. She stretches out on the bed, unfolding like a butterfly, knotting her hands in her hair, releasing them, letting them hang languorously over the edge, slowly moving towards the camera.

For you, she whispers, and she knows he's heard.

The screen once more goes black.


	7. Because

Peyton. Yes? Well, pick up the phone honey.

Why Daddy?

No answer.

I can't get up now honey. My head hurts.

No answer again. It's ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing.

It's because you're drunk, daddy. It's because you miss mommy, daddy.

Yes baby. Your daddy's very sad.

No answer. The phone is still ringing.

Are you going to …….

NO!

When she wakes up that morning, she feels slightly ill. She stumbles down to the bathroom. Her face is thinner, more drawn than usual. She pushes her hair back behind her ears, but it falls down in her face again. She pushes it back. It falls again. Tears of frustration begin to form in the corners of her eyes. It's just a small thing, she tells herself. Stop stop stop it! Nothing.

She slumps against the cool tile floor. The world is empty. Her skin feels clammy. She's shivering. Her body is full of sadness. It's seeping out of her pores, creeping out from between her lips, leaking out of her eyes, evaporating from her fingertips, her feet. The warmth is leaving her body.

She stumbles towards the kitchen.

Bottles rattle. Cupboard doors bang open and shut. A cigarette weakly trembles from her lips, and falls on the carpet, until. She doesn't notice. A small sob escapes her throat. A thick feeling is blocking her throat; she wants to call Brooke, but she doesn't. It's just one of those days, those bad days, she repeats over and over. They come now and then. It'll all be over soon. Just sleep it out.

She swallows two small pills left over from Brooke's generous contributions. Vicodin, or maybe, Valium. She doesn't know the difference. She takes a sleeping pill too, and swallows two capfuls of NyQuil. The world is starting to blur lightly at the edges. The morning sunlight creeping in thin slats of pale yellow through the blinds seems sharp enough to cut her. She retreats to the bedroom, pulling down all the shades. She wants to sob, but everything is dry and clenching in her chest.

She curls deep under the covers.

It's ok. This happens sometimes, there's days like this. It'll go away soon.

She stands up, letting the covers fall. She has to go to school, there's a quiz in economics today. She's so tired all of a sudden, old pictures flashing behind her closed eyes. She crawls back into bed, and her body feels so heavy, she can't reach back to the floor to grab her covers. She just curls up in a ball and starts to shiver, drifting in and out of reality.

Peyton? Yes. Well, pick up the phone.

Don't want to.

No answer. 

Why? Is it that dickhead boyfriend of yours? Is he bothering you?

No answer again. Ringing and ringing and ringing, penetrating and shrill.

For chrissake Peyton honey shut it off. My head hurts.

It's because you're old daddy. It's because you worked night shift too daddy.

Yes honey. Your daddy's very tired.

No answer. The phone is still ringing.

Are you going to…….

NO!

He notices when she's not in her classes with him. She usually never skips school. He guesses she must be sick, but he has a strange feeling as though she might not. She was perfectly fine yesterday.

Lila Slater notices, like she always does.

In the buzzing lunchroom, she sits down lithely next to Brooke, her long, tan legs stretching out on the bench, modestly pressing down her cheerleading skirt around her thighs as though no one had caught a full glance when she sat. She smiles sweetly, playing with her hair.

"Where's your soul sister, designated driver, llamaze-class partner today, Brooke-baby?" she asks innocently, and Brooke rolls her eyes. Brooke never shows signs of distress in public. She considers it a personal weakness.

"Somewhere not here, still keeping her mouth shut about that little secret of yours, Lila," replies Brooke in her cigarette voice, blandly sipping on a diet Coke, deliberately looking away from Lila. The blond girl recoils a little, but a spark of malice lingers in her eyes.

"Whatever. How was your weekend? Oh, Jenna kinda wants to go out with Josh Altmeyer, and she told me to ask you how he is in bed, since she said she figures you've probably already done him."

Brooke, for the first time since junior high says nothing.

Lila's voice gets a little louder.

"Hey, no snappy comeback, Brooke? What happened at Nathan's basketball appreciation night party? I heard a rumor that you threw yourself at Jake, Nathan, and Lucas and none of them wanted you. Maybe you're losing your touch, no pun intended."

Again, nothing but silence.

By now Lila is smiling, a twisted, stretching kind of smile. Everybody at the table is watching this.

Brooke suddenly turns towards her, fixing her with a point blank stare.

"So Lila, I guess no one here ever heard about how your cousin used to make you make out with him. Or about the fact that you sucked the coach's assistant's dick to make the cheersquad freshman year. Or that you used to steal from your church's donation box to pay for pot to give to your exboyfriend so he wouldn't dump you."

Lila's face turns bright red. Every face at the table is frozen in displeased shock. She stands up, sputtering.

"All those things are damn lies, Brooke, and you know it! Everyone knows it!"

"Do they?" grins Brooke tiredly, standing up, her face suddenly turning stone. "Do they Lila?" she says louder, and a hush settles over the cafeteria. "We'll never know, will we!" she says loudly and clearly, evenly paced. "No one will ever know if any of the disgusting things they hear us saying about each other  are true! Because no one has proof, and they don't want it! They want lies!"

She turns around, facing the cafeteria.

"I know you all loved all the little whispers that originated at this table, you loved watching the showdowns, the little snappy repartee. Well, no more people. I'm sick and tired of your stupid fake-ass lies, Lila. You can dish but you don't like taking. Or at least that's what your boyfriend mentioned in regard to oral sex."

A collective gasp went up. 

"See what I mean? That was bullshit but you all loved hearing it!" screams Brooke suddenly. "You love it you fuckin sickos!"

She turns around to Lila, her voice quiet.

"You love it, Lila."

She turns back once more.

"I'm done."

She sits.

A hand taps her shoulder. She turns her head to face Ms. Gray, the monitor.

"No-no," is the only thing the woman says, grabbing Brooke and Lila's arms.

He's standing on her porch that afternoon, peering through the half drawn shades. Her car is there, but there is no sign of her.

He puts his hand on the knob, and to his surprise, the door is unlocked.

He sees the cigarette on the floor, and begins walking faster.

"Peyton."

No response.

He looks in the bathroom, and sees the open bottle of NyQuil, the sticky green ring of the cup in the sink. It's mostly full. Maybe she's sick. 

Maybe not.

He opens her door softly. The room is dark.

She is laying there, curled up, and the blanket is on the floor. Her eyes are open, and she's staring into space. The firefly tip of a cigarette is blooming red in her mouth, burning orange, then dying down to a dark glow again.

"Peyton?"

She doesn't reply. He sits on the side of the bed. Her hand falls to the side of the bed, dropping the cigarette into a wastebasket. The floor is littered with stubs.

Her immense sadness hits him then forcefully, and he can hardly breathe; he feels it pressing in around them like a weight on his chest, his back.

Peyton? Well, pick up the phone.

Don't want to.

No answer. Papers shuffling.

Pick it up honey, I can't now, I'm doing the bills.

Ok daddy.

Then silence.

It's for you daddy. Some doctor guy. Must be calling to schedule your flu shot daddy.

Here, hon. Bring it over.

Daddy where's mom? She's late. She said she'd watch the Fresh Prince with me today.

No answer.

No answer.

No answer.

He lays down beside her, pulling her into him. She feels so cold. He pulls up the blanket from the floor, covering them both. He takes her frozen hands into his and begins rubbing them, massaging the fingers like his mom showed him how to get the blood flowing, rubbing her wrists. He notices her eyes are leaking, tears spilling out of the corners irregularly, following each other in a slow, random pattern. She feels so small, so thin. 

"Lucas," she whispers.

"I'm sorry," he says, just like his mom says to him when something bad has happened. He envelops her in his arms.

She lies there motionless in his arms, her tears absorbed into his shirt.

"It's just one of the bad days," she says in a flat tone, no indication. It sounds as though she could be eating or doing homework, not crying. "They come now and then."

He nods, wishing he understood.

"It'll be over soon," he says, stroking her hair. Her voice is numb and gravelly.

"I can't feel anything," she whispers.

He feels a genuine sorrow seeping into him.

"Tell me what I can do," he says, and she looks up at him, as though she is tired. She waves a hand nonchalantly, as though completely unaware of the tears streaming out of her eyes. Her voice is rather flat and bored.

"Hey, let's fuck."

His eyes open wide, startled. He's not sure what to say. A thousand thoughts race through his head.

"Peyton, you're crying," he says gently.

She turns to him, surprised.

"I am?"

She's fallen asleep, her tears drying sticky on her cheeks.

She never started sobbing, really crying. Tears just came out of her eyes like the air coming out of her mouth in short breaths. No emotion escaped, fought it's way out. It didn't have the energy too. In his arms, she feels heavy, sodden, as though already dead. He fights the thought.

He wraps her up, turning the heat up a little. He goes in the kitchen and scours around for something to eat, but there is nothing. Checking on her again, he grabs his keys and runs out. He picks some soup up at the café, some caffeine free ginger ale because he read somewhere it settles an upset stomach. He's not sure if she has one or not. He makes a cream cheese sandwich and a roast beef sandwich because he doesn't know if she's vegetarian. He throws in some fruit, because he guesses she might need some vitamins.

It only takes half an hour.

He drives back to her house, and sees Brooke's convertible in the driveway. Wary, he rings the doorbell.

A giggling Brooke throws the door open.

And he can see her there, in the living room, fully dressed and made up. She's drinking straight out of the gin bottle.

"Whaddya want?" asks Brooke curtly, jutting one hip out, hands crossed under her breasts, discreetly pushing them together a little. "You wanna talk to her? Not sure she wants to talk to you buddy. You might lecture her for drinking, since you don't do any of that bad stuff yourself. Or maybe you want to do her? Is that why you keep coming around?"

"Brooke shut up ya dumbass," he hears her giggle from inside.

Something in him is breaking or hardening.

"Peyton?" he calls out, and she appears at the door, shoving Brooke out of the way. Her face is worried, uncertain, and defensive.

"Are you feeling better?" he asks, unsure.

"What are you talking about?" she whispers with a frightened but steely look. 

He feels so tired all of a sudden.

"Fine. Whatever. I brought you some food so you won't pass out, some ginger ale for your stomach. I didn't know if you were veggie or not so I made both, and eat some fruit so you don't get scurvy. And try to use some of it to absorb whatever shit you're drinking."

Her mouth trembles, her face almost giving her away before straightening up into it's dull, flat mask.

"I…."

But he's not listening. He's already walking towards his car.

She wants to cry.

But she can't. She's cried herself out today. There is nothing left. The alcohols is warm and spreading through her veins. Brooke throws an arm around her shoulder.

"It's just you and me baby," she slurs.

Peyton slams her door shut as he drives away, grabbing the bottle from Brooke who giggles and whoops.

She takes a long drink.


	8. Exquisite

Hey everyone! This is Luce speaking.

It's been a while, but I am back……to post what I think is the greatest thing I've ever written and which no one probly cares about because I write GG fic. So big deal. Regardless, I have 6 new chapters of this rather AU saga involving two characters I met last fall when I actually watched the show…..and who deserved better than what the show made them out to be.

Thanks to all the loyal fans, and to all of you who've stumbled upon me, I'm humbly grateful that you took the time.

Enjoy.

Luce

Exquisite

She knows this time, it is her fault and she alone can fix it.

She does realize (really, she does) that it's her responsibility to approach him and explain her insensitive and rather offensive behavior.

But somehow, she keeps hoping that he'll put two and two together.

Somehow, she wishes that he could sense the embarrassment, the terrible shame she feels every time she sees him. It's hard for her to even think about how he saw this miserable thing in her life, this dimension of her that is so hidden.

She wishes he understood how terribly quick this all was, that it was too soon for a stranger such as him to see this devastation.

She just hopes, waiting, knowing that it's her turn to give in a little.

She just needs  a push, a reason, something! It's hard, she tells herself. She justifies it in a million ways and still knows she is in the wrong at the end.

Maybe she'll draw him a wonderfully mediocre, angsty, melodramatic, almost pathetically comical picture that he can make fun of. In doing so, he'll feel they're even now, and maybe feel more sympathetic towards her, which will lead to kindness.

But she doesn't really think so.

She stretches out on the shiny wooden floor of the gym, next to the other lithe girls who bed like rubber bands. She hates bendy girls. Her legs are too long for her to reach her toes. She flips Lila (whose wrists reach over her toes) the finger. Brooke giggles, a smirky, hoarse little sound, like a 40 year old waitress flirting with a trucker for extra tips. She loves Brooke for always seeing these little things when no one else does.

The Many Reasons I Love Brooke, she thinks.

Another crackpot essays. She's always making them up in her head.

She gives me free booze, sleeping pills and condoms. She got me on the squad. She hooked me up with Nathan. She fills up my spare time and makes Lila Slater mad. 

She cocks her head to the side, watching her friend shake pompoms cheerily.

The Many Reasons I Hate Brooke.

See 1, 2, and 3 previously listed above. Because she knows my secrets. Because she made Lucas hate me. 

She sighs, picking up the poms and staring at them as though they were some alien object. What the hell am I doing is what passes through her head. Then she remembers. These poms are what saved your ass from social leprosy, Peyton. Hold fast to them. Stuff them down your shirt, between your legs, lick them up and down. That would have the same effect as just holding them, because that's what people think about when they see them anyway. You're a sex machine, Peyton. That's what all those people pay two bucks at the door for.

He goes home early that week, not stopping by anymore. He's pretty sure what happened. She was embarrassed that he saw her in that state so early in their friendship. It's understandable.

But that doesn't do anything to alleviate the hurt he felt when she stood there in her doorway insolently, grinning at his ludicrous bag of sandwiches.

Fuck fuck fuck, he thinks. Don't think that. She didn't mean it. She was drunk. She wasn't trying to embarrass you in front the world's biggest loudmouth. He's surprised he's not the Sandwich Man by now around school. Veggie or not? Who gives a fuck. Not Peyton. To top the humiliation, he ate her sandwiches on the way home cause he was hungry, and he realized they tasted like shit cause the bread must've been old.

Whatever.

Because of all of these things, this time he can't swallow his pride and be understanding enough to go to her. He just waits, and ignores her long legs, forgetting not to smile as he watches her struggle to reach her toes, sticking out her tongue and flipping Lila, aka Gumby, the finger.

It was just funny, that's all. He's not done being mad at her yet.

She remembers when Brooke found out her secret.

She'd felt such horror, such fear. How carefully she'd guarded their relationship ever since, how cautiously she'd stepped around Brooke's insensitive comments and careless treatment. She'd been nothing but the model friend since, save for that one lovely little outburst during practice that had quickly been resolved. Does that mean that she and Brooke aren't really friends?

Of course they are. Brooke was the one that demonstrated to her how to shove up a tampon, no qualms. Brooke is the one who finds her cheat sheets. Brooke was the one that secured her status. Brooke is the one who suffers with her.

But now, after meeting Lucas, for the first time in her life she's not sure that this history with Brooke is what friendship means. For the first time, she's gotten a glimpse of what the word friendship could potentially really mean.

And Brooke……seems pale and weak, almost demented by comparison.

Nothing's right side up anymore, she contemplates. Fuckin shame. And she had it so figured out before this cocky little nobody boy came along and screwed it all up for her.

Figures.

So she shows up at his café in the evening when she passes by and sees him working there. Maybe she was just passing by. Maybe she came intentionally. No one will ever know.

She clears her throat and cracks her knuckles and sits down at the bar, ordering an iced tea. He brings her one, with a wedge of lemon, which she stares at for a second.

He just punches in her bill and prints it, signs it with a "have a nice day, J Lucas"

She feels very insignificant. She sucks it up and tries to start conversation.

"Hey, what's up?"

He looks at her incredulously. 

"What's up?" he asks back, a little sarcastic and bewildered. "I dunno, you tell me."

She writhes and wrings her hands.

"Look I was drunk."

"Oh geez. Ok, that's a Paris Hilton press-junket excuse. I know you can do better. Get creative. Hey, I was being insensitive. Hey, I was being stupid for letting Brooke get me drunk after I had taken pharmaceuticals on top of it."

"Yeah, all that too," she whispers, taking a dry swallow.

Seeing her dull countenance, her hands knotted in her lap, her sagging shoulders, he softens a little bit.

"I'm not nobody Peyton. I need to be treated like a human and you need to understand that since I like you, I will worry about you. And since I like you, I'll maybe feel that your reaction to my small discovery shouldn't be so extreme. What, are you afraid I'd tell people? Everyone has bad days, Peyton."

"Not like that, Lucas," she whispers, her tone low and flat. "Maybe I was embarrassed because I like you too. Maybe I thought you didn't want to see that, that it would make you dislike me."

This plain admission pauses everything in him for a moment. He didn't expect her to be so frank. He's not sure how to respond, but then instantly, he feels something warm in him again, something that pushes away the anger.

There is nothing left there but tender sadness for her.

And general raving lust.

And a little bit of this thing he can't exactly name If he were a girl, or if he were honest, he might call it love.

He walks her home. The house is dark. They sit together on her bed against the headboard, ignoring physical attraction. He decides to be a friend only for tonight. Her leg swings off the side of the bed in rhythm to the music, and she picks at her nails, not looking at him. 

"How long?"

She sighs.

"Since it happened. It was bad at first for a while, like that everyday. Then gradually, it went down to once a week, then now and then. That's where it is now."

He considers this slowly.

"What does it feel like."

Her mouth twists a little, but she sighs again bitterly and obliges.

"Like I'm already dead, just a corpse. I can't stop crying and being stupid and I take medication and sleep a lot. Happy Dr. Scott?"

He puts his hands up, backing off.

"Sorry."

"Yeah, whatever."

"How come you don't get pills for it or talk to somebody?"

She shrugs.

"Cause then I'd be Brooke."

His eyes open wide a little, and he whistles.

"Guess she's not so well either," he says. "I kinda figured she wasn't all there though. She has no problem letting the world know when she's not happy."

"Yeah, well, that's her style. I prefer martyrdom."

He laughs.

"Martyrdom isn't martyrdom if no one really hears about it. It's just plain stupidity. But considering your choice of friends, I wouldn't tell anyone either."

She winces a little, uncomfortable. He notices, fine tuning his perception to her facial expression and body tics. He stores it all away to remember later. Note: pulled up shoulder, bad (unless accompanied by smile). Crossed arms, bad. That little lip thing, when she draws then into a thin line like string for a second, bad. Wincing, definitely bad. Picking at nail? Who knows.

"Listen," she says, "why are you doing this? If I decided to never sleep with you, would you still do it?"

He pauses for a second, uncomfortable at the position he is in.

"Would you let me at least still kiss you?" he asks lightly, expecting her to laugh.

But she seems quite serious.

"Yes."

He can't believe he's striking this kind of deal. He really doesn't think he'll be able to deal  with this.

"Never is an awfully long time to not have sex, Peyton, but if you want me to I will."

She looks at him in shock, disbelief, and all the related emotions.

"Are you serious?" she whispers.

He shrugs, and nods.

"Well, yeah."

She laughs then.

"Liar."

He does not respond. She throws him a cautious look over her shoulder, and takes a deep breath which she lets out in uneven bursts.

"Look, maybe that is a little extreme. What I meant is I'd just like to take it slow. This just isn't like anything I've ever done, you know? You brought me sandwiches. I don't know how to act."

He seems to consider this reasonable, cocking his head to one side and grinning agreeably.

They lay down on the bed, stretched out, face to face, looking at each other. His hand reaches over towards her face.

"Can I cross the middle line?" he asks, and she smiles and gives a little nod.

His fingertips trace her sullen lips, her small doll nose, her slightly dented chin, those flyaway curls. He makes her think of those children's picture books, of a little Alice in Wonderland.

They skim lightly over her throat, and trace the curve of her ear, and cradle that magic place on the back of her neck where soft skin meets even softer hair.

In return, her hand wanders hesitantly towards him. She can't help but smile shyly.

Her small palm with it's long, slender fingers cups his jaw, stroking his cheek. She leans in slightly towards him and kisses the place where his ear and his neck connect, sending a little shiver through him. This is different, she knows. Different than that terrible party where things were so screwed up and she was buzzed and depressed out of her mind.

She'd just been trying to fuck then, she guesses. 

Not like this.

He leans over and kisses her eyelid, just a little butterfly touch. She smiles delightedly and curls up in pleasure, her knees touching his stomach. His fingers trace circles on her the thin, bruised appendages.

"What is wrong with your knees?"

She sighs.

"They're just ugly, that's all. I have to kneel on the wooden floor for all these pyramids and they bruise easy cause they're bony….."

He grins.

"I like them."

"Shut up."

"No, I said I like them."

She rolls her eyes.

"Are you going to say something corny?"

He laughs.

"Yes, and you're going to enjoy it."  
She sighs. 

"Guess I don't have a choice. Go ahead."

He thinks for a moment.

"I like other things too. I like your ankles and how exquisite and small they are although your feet are messed up."

"Thanks."

"And I like your small little wrists with this sharp bone sticking out the side. I like your fingers and they way they hold a pen. I like your paper-cut thin lips and I love you big, blinky china doll eyes when you put that black stuff on the eyelashes and it makes you look like porcelain."

She pauses for a second, trying to hide her satisfaction, failing miserably.

"Not too corny."

"You loved it huh."

"Don't get cocky," she warns him, and with a touch of smugness, he leans forward and lays down a little kiss on her lips, a bare touch of a kiss, a small connection. She kisses back a little, but they are still apart. Their lips press together sweetly, and she feels such a strange feeling, this feeling she hasn't felt for a long time.

It's something akin to happiness.


	9. What We Were

Sometimes, when she sees the two of them side by side, her mind automatically compares them. It's not by choice really; it's an instinct, drilled into her by Brooke, a constant reminder-always trade up.

This is the motto. If we had one, I mean, Brooke had said. You know like three for one and one for a-

I get it, she had replied back.

I don't know if you do, Brooke had answered. Look, once you start trading down, it all goes down Shit Creek. Before you know it you'll be like Misty Rae, the acne chick with saddlebags who gives free hummers in desperate attempts to get invited places. She just keeps trading down lower and lower, because that's how she started. But you've always got to trade up-something better, faster, finer…."

She hadn't meant to keep listening, but Brooke kept talking because she knew she was being heard. If there was anything Brooke was really good at, it was striking fear into her heart like a match on a cigarette. Toxic. Dizzy.

She's right, Peyton had thought. Because if I don't keep trading up, I'll end up with something worse than Nathan, and no one but me knows how bad that could really be. Terrifying almost.

So when she looks at Nathan and Lucas, in spite of her shame at the act, her mind makes cold and impersonal calculation. Height. Tone. Face. Mouth. Gossip. Possibility. It's nothing person, she wants to tell him. It's just….who I am.

Or who I was.

She's not sure she wants to do that anymore, and that's the problem. Ever since that night at the café, she's felt a stab of shame everytime she's made any calculations. Which girl to stand by or not to stand near. Who to hang with at lunch today. How short her skirt should be in case Mr. Hopkins wasn't persuaded by her English essay alone. These kinds of things. When she realizes her mind is making them for her, she feels a pang of guilt she didn't know before.

I know why, thinks Peyton. 

It's your fault Lucas. Your fault again.

She tries to shut her eyes and block out his conscience that's seeped into hers, waking it up from a long dormancy. But she sees his penetrating look of quiet questioning every time something loud and ugly comes out of her mouth, not judging, just looking at her.

And she knows for the first time what regret is.

The heat comes in during the spring at an uncertain point, making moist halos around the streetlights, bursting magnolia blossoms and dogwoods into trembling bloom, making the river stir. Over the marshes a pale Carolina moon rises at night, coloring the reeds in black, swaying gently in the wind.

It makes her remember things, flashes of moments, pictures.

_It's evening, river evening, the kind where the sun takes it's own sweet time setting, burning deep orange and purple and fuchsia over the reeds in Marsh __Downs__ by __Orchard__Lake__. We're on the edge of the swamps, on the bank, watching the herons move with a slow grace through the glassy waters. The sun is dying, drowning in the water, sinking between the reeds, the sky is deep blue-mauve, a thick, warm, damp twilight setting over the sky. There's one small star that's shining fiercely, twinkling over Duck Point._

She's home alone. She pads over to the door quietly, footsteps muffled by the carpet, and checks all the locks. There seems to be something pressing outside at the door, the inky black southern night, suffocating, thick with memories. A 11 year old Brooke flashes before her eyes, a scrawny girl with a crooked mouth and big moppet doll eyes like she'd just been scared or something.

And there was Nathan too, before they hit junior high. Before they understood the meaning of the word popularity. Before he was anyone in particular except a boy they hung out with sometimes, because they lived close by then, all of them. It was a small class of about 130 kids-almost all she knew by name-come up together since grade school for the most part. She sits on the couch and wraps a blanket around her shoulders, shuddering a little.

_It's night; summer night, thick and beautiful, muggy; there's a river breeze blowing, and it smells like red clay. They're standing in front of Collier's, Nathan's got his foot propped sole to the wall behind him, leaning back against it. He's just wearing a white undershirt and some jeans, rolled up at the bottom, to show off the new red Chuck Taylors. Orange streetlights shine down on us, and little lights shine out from the windows. Three old men in chairs are sitting out in front of Stover's Dime in wooden chairs, under the overhang; they're smoking, the tips of their cigarettes glowing like little red fireflies in the dusky night. Their voices softly carry in the stillness, a sporadic laugh or two punctuating the quiet garble. They're telling stories tonight, river stories. Billy Calhoun left a few minutes ago, to go home for dinner. Mrs. Calhoun yelled down the street for him to come; she's always yelling down the street, not because she really has to, but because she wants everybody to notice._

_"Where's Brooke?"_

_A shrug._

_"She's late. She's always late." Nathan says, popping out the penknife, and begging to carve a reed like Owen Mills showed him last week. _

_"You got the string?" he says, and Peyton hands it to him. Biting the end off, he quickly ties it through, and secures it with a deft movement. Curious and impressed, she ogles it._

_"What is it?" she asks amiably, and he shows her._

_"A whistle.__ See, you can hang it around your neck. Here, blow in it." _

_She blows, just because he looks so damn proud. It makes a squawk; she  wrinkles her nose. She doesn't like the sound._

_"What you tryin' to do, call ducks?"_

_"Maybe."___

_"What you want a duck for?"_

_"Dinner," he says grinning, and they chuckle. He's an idiot sometimes._

_Brooke's  here__, suddenly appearing from the little alley to our right by the Red Rock Public Library. Her face looks strange tonight, but beautiful. She saunters towards them slowly, leaning against the building next to him._

_"What's that?" she says, taking it curiously from his hands. He's a slightly awkward, unsure, watching her in an almost embarrassed way. She doesn't laugh like Peyton did._

_"I like it," she says, and her smile lights up the whole sidewalk. They don't even need lamp posts anymore. He looks at her curiously, and she smiles at him again in the darkness. Peyton feels left out all of a sudden. He rubs the back of his neck and dares to look up at her again; her eyes are like mahogany under the harsh orange light, melted into his. They just stand there, breathing for a while, heavily._

_"Can I keep it?" she says softly, and Nathan looks up, surprised. _

_"Yeah," he says, so low you can barely hear it. "Don't lose it."_

_Peyton looks at the whistle, trying to figure out what's special about it._

_"It's just a duck whistle, dang. Shoot, Nathan'll make you a dozen a day. Lose it if you want," she says obliviously.  jumping up and amicably offering them both an arm. _

_Linking arms, they walk for a few steps, but they're not saying anything. She's just looking at the daggone duck whistle in her hand like she's never seen one before. And Nathan, he's just staring at the sidewalk._

_They hear the sound of a ball being bounced then, and that's when the three of them looked up and Peyton remembers watching the blond boy emerging from a shadow on the other side of the street, driving the ball, oblivious. He does a fake little half step. They stare. In the next moment he looks up and sees them, loses the ball and quickly reclaims it. They stand there on opposite sides of the street as though those few yards of pavement were an ocean-Nathan's cheeks are red-no one says anything really-_

_"Isn't that your brother?" Brooke whispers then, as the blond boy starts dribbling again, looking down at the pavement, quickly moving away from them. "Lucas?"_

_The boy doesn't answer. He stares straight ahead, and shrugs, and starts walking. We take two quick halfsteps and catch up. He's forgotten about her, about that awkwardness that hung there for a moment, ripe and blossoming.  _

She'd known back then that he had liked Brooke-by the end of seventh grade everyone did-but then came eight grade and basketball camp and the varsity team and Ginny Lakowsky making out with him in the back seat of his dad's car.All the boys slapped him on the back and his dad made him start lifting weights. Brooke was hard by eight grade too, hard and fixed the way she is now, because of what happened, things Peyton's not still entirely sure of except that they had walked in one day on a half empty bottle of Jack and Brooke's mother, naked, straddling a man on the kitchen counter and that was all she ever knew. Brooke never opened her mouth again. But she watched Peyton with sharp eyes, guarding her, guarding the secret. She saw what happened to Nathan, and that boys invited Ginny Lakowski and Lila Slater to their boy-girl parties first, and Brooke and Peyton were only tacked on at the end to make sure there were enough girls for spin the bottle. Then Peyton and Brooke started getting asked out by boys. That was the summer that Brooke and Peyton saved up enough money from babysitting to go to cheerleading camp, and to take gymnastics lessons; the fall of ninth grade they made the team and got to wear those skirts to school on game day, and that was the end of the three of them running around Marsh Downs and Orchard Lake and Mickler's Creek.

That was the end of anything innocent.

That was where they were now.

She sits alone on the couch and turns on the TV to drown out the memories, the sound of the humid night pressing its way in. She presses the power button and it turns black, cutting off the sound abruptly. She heads to the computer and clicks on the webcam, but there's no one there. She pulls out her sketchpad, but her pencil writes words instead of drawing the smooth curve of a line.

"Tonight, I'm sleeping on the couch, or rather, laying awake; the pale blue electric light outside filters quietly through the curtains, making dark blue shadows on the still objects in the living room. It throws pale lacy shadows from your curtains across the carpet, striking a vase of unmoving reeds in the corner. I feel empty and alone, and hollow like a shell; I'm brittle and breakable, my fingertips curled up tight around the edge of the thin blanket. The blue shadows swallow me, still and humming, while the black, Southern night covers the house, creeping in under the door and through the air vents. Memories suffocate me, pulling me under like a seeping tide; I can't breathe, and then, scared, I struggle to draw in air over and over, but not too loudly, as though I'm afraid of being heard breathing."

She pauses for breath, her own words paralyzing her with fear.

"I'm scared," she writes underneath. "That I'll never be good enough for you. That I'll never forget. That the waters will just close up over my head, something I thought about everytime we went to Orchard Lake in the evening. The water was so black, so still under the sky, like oil-I remember the year we turned eight, Roy Blanchard drowned in the lake when he and his friends went swimming at night. I though about that everytime I looked at the water, how it must have swallowed him like the night, quick and silent, a gust of wind on a candle and then the moon went dark."

She stops point blank, fingers trembling.

"It would be the same thing to love you and then to have lost. To disappoint you. I'm afraid it's too late to change, I'm too scared to change. Where will I go now? What will I do? I can't be nobody anymore after being somebody, I can't rely on you alone. I'm too scared."

She slams it shut, pauses, looks at it, opens it again cautiously.

Everything honest she's ever written she's torn up and thrown away.

Diatribes about Brooke's stupidity. Rants about Nathan's insensitivity. Truth about her life or her habits. Anything vulnerable. Hundreds of dead trees passing through her bedroom straight to the garbage or the toilet or the lighter. 

This time, she doesn't rip this out.

She leaves it there, toying with the idea of showing it to him, wondering if she's ever done anything so personally revealing. She'd feel less naked taking off all her clothes than giving him this. 

But at least she doesn't throw it away.

Making progress, Peyton, she tells herself, and calls Brooke, begging her to come over.

"I'm a little under the weather," she tells the redhead who is giggling on the other end of the line, watching a sitcom. "I need someone to drown my conscience, sedate me into oblivion, remind me of all those great things that are really important like……trading up. Someone fantastic and shallow."

"Bless your heart, tramp," Brooke had replied, laughing. "I'll be right over with a cocktail in my hand and some dirty details."

She hangs up, looking around the kitchen, wondering if she has anything to eat, remembering Brooke doesn't really eat. She pours some Southern Comfort into the ice trays to toss into their Diet Coke- and lemon- plus- Brooke's- preferred poison, digs up half a bag of sugar-free gummi worms and a bag of Baked Lay's from a Subway combo she never opened. Rifling through her CD's, she slams down some No Doubt, a compromise between her and Brooke to set the mood.

After all, you can't expect miracles, she tells herself. Two steps forward one step back. The important thing, she thinks firmly, is that you keep moving.


	10. Please

She's hard and quick with him sometimes, making things awkward when they don't have to be, letting silences hang when she could fill them. At these times he looks at her almost suspiciously, as though she were doing it on purpose. Her reluctant mouth and shifting eyes say nothing at all. She wishes she was a lady. Lila Slater is a lady-she could talk her way out of anything, from getting caught fucking the principal on his desk by the entire school board to meeting her fiancee's non-English-speaking parents. Hypothetical and unlikely situations, but Peyton holds to it blindly that should they ever happen, Lila would handle them perfectly, sashaying right back on out of that black hole. 

She strikes a match, lighting a Parliament, sitting on her back porch in rolled up shorts and a trashy shirt her father must've picked up at some truck stop (Jesus is Coming, (then on the back) Look Busy!). The sleeves are torn off. He glances quickly at her side, his eyes skimming those huge ripped holes, catching a glance of creamy skin, the edge of a stiff pink brassiere descending into soft curve. She's well aware. Her long legs sprawl out over the porch steps, toes bent inward in that old childish habit that always makes her look sullen and vulnerable, bony knees clamped together. She rests her chin in her hand, tapping the cigarette ash by his foot.

"I'm serious. I want you to come to dinner," he tells her, aware of her caustic mood. She burns holes of toxicity in the air around her. The suggestion has brought on this bristling change, like the short, harsh summer storms roiling up from the coast. He understands it's just fear. Her sharp elbows clamp down by her side, hunching, blocking that gleaming gratuitous glimpse of skin. He looks away.

"Lucas, I don't have any home training. I might eat my shrimp with the salad fork, used the ice tea spoon for the soup and refer to your mom as Mrs. Scott."

He considers this for a moment.

"You don't have to be scared. I want to …..show you my room and my cheesy Chapel Hill Ball posters and my crappy seventies orange couch and have my mom embarrass me or whatever. I just do."

"What are you a masochist? I'm just bad at it, ok? End of story."

He pauses, staring at her. Her knuckles are white on the cigarette, like the paper; her hair is hiding her face.

"Why are you being so difficult?"

She freezes a little, surprised at the frankness of his tone. There is no anger in it. She feels an swell of irritation, but then realizes the irrationality of her own actions grudgingly. I don't want to make you go away, she tries to tell him telepathically, but he's still listening for an answer. She sighs, slumping a little like a pouting child.

"I'll come, ok? Just expect it to be painful."

He grins.

"It doesn't have to be."

She drags on the cigarette and stomps it out with her cheap plastic flip flop, swiping it to the side. He looks at her in half contemplation, half admiration, half disgust.

"You shouldn't go to all this trouble to get so pretty before I come. I like a little grit."                                                            

She rolls her eyes.

"Good, cause I didn't brush my teeth yet," she replies, a little defensively. She knows she's still fuckin' fine. "I'm still fuckin' fine anyway," she tells him. Asks him. "Yeah you are," he answers, sensing it, and is rewarded by the first smile, a rather small, afraid one.

"So what, this dinner ritual thing, is it like the pinning thing? The nice girl Lila Slater lady thing? Mom this is my girlfriend, would you two like to go shopping thing?" He watches her in bewilderment as her face scrunches up a little. "The 'bestow your approval upon her' thing? Because she won't like me-they never really do. Nathan's parents only had me to dinner once or twice, and only demanded it so that they'd at least get used enough to my face so that it wouldn't scare them if I walked out of their shower."

He winces visibly, and two spots of color appear on her otherwise pale cheeks. He doesn't reply.

She pulls out another cigarette. Her eyes feel hot and itchy. No, no, she thinks. Later. Her mouth opens without her consent. "Do you have a…..an approved outfit description for me? Because he told me what to wear-he said he didn't want me to show up looking skanky cause then his dad would think I was too trashy for their family and their country club. I have some beige-is beige ok?"

Her words spill out, nervous, defiant, bitchy. Each bit into him like a succession of blows.

He stands up, rather pale.

"Fuck it then. You don't have to come. Forget I asked. Maybe this was a bad idea."

She stands up too, rapidly, her eyes welling up, wishing she had kept her stupid mouth shut. Stupid Peyton, the echo refrains in her head. Goddamn!

And then, rather subdued, head hung miserably, she makes some kind of motion with her hand towards him, a leaning of the awkward, half askance shoulder, maybe a tilt of body, and he understands she's trying to touch him but does not say so. Instead he just takes her into his arms, a fierce clamp hold of possession, brute forgiveness, briefly and violently. 

"I don't care if you come in bondage wear or a gothic wedding dress. Sunday night at six I'll be here to pick you up. I don't want to hear anymore shit about your inferior manners either."

He vaults down those few steps, that easy, lithe way he has of moving with that boy-grace she always envied and coveted. Pausing, he turns back to look at her.

"And Peyton," he finishes, "Lila Slater is not a lady."

She watches him slam the door to the truck, hearing the engine start. She lifts a hand, nervously, frustratedly, and then promptly puts it back down again because it feels so corny. She feels like crying now, a little from anger, a little from relief.

"Neither am I," she says to no one in particular, and this makes her eyes well up again, which makes her even madder and she slams the screen door on her way back in. She stomps across the living room gracelessly, flinging her closet door open and rifling through the stacks of clothes-tartan minis, tight jeans, that crappy leather jacket, JC Penney shit, that ludicrous leopard print top from Brooke, Ramones tee, Distillers tee, Jane's Addiction tee, three cheerleading uniforms, a bulky church dress, her black party/funeral dress, more skirts that she deems too short. She shoves them all to the side, hangers screeching against the wood pole. More t-shirts, shorts, some netting, safety pins, shitty tube tops from the Brooke collection, spaghetti straps (Lila Slater's parents won't let her wear them in public-they say they're too slutty for a good Southern lady), spaghetti strap dresses. 

The energy drains out of her all of a sudden, and she sits on the bed rather limply. She has one ugly beige sheath her aunt bought her from Profitt's. It's what she wore to Nathan's both times. No one noticed, since his mom wasn't there the second time anyway.

Then the tears finally come. Just one or two, nothing messy really, childish tantrum tears.

"Neither am I!" she yells to the empty house. "Neither am I!".

A few minutes later, feeling dumb and tired, she calls Brooke.

"I need a dress."

"Ooh, like a fuck-me dress?"

She sighs tiredly. It's the only kind Brooke owns.

"No, I need a marry me dress."

Silence.

"I don't think I own one of those."

"Me either."

More silence.

"Guess we're going shopping. Either that or we call Lila."

A pause.

They both burst into snorting laughter.

"Yeah right."

"So, nothing salvageable?" asks Brooke an hour later as they wander through the half-empty shopping mall. Vapid, tinny mall music plays through the invisible speakers, echoing off the unimpressive walls and glass windows of stores. There's nothing decent in that shithole-three departments stores, a bunch of china and specialty stores, a movie theater, a Bible bookstore, antiques, an ugly trendazoid teen shop, an understocked Abercrombie and Fitch where most of the "popular" kids try to shop, a million middle aged women's stores-Chico's, Petite Sophisticate, Talbot's, April Cornell (here they both paused and burst into another snorting fit of laughter), Laura Ashley (repeat), Bass, Eddie Bauer. The few seemingly obvious choices are out of their price range-Limited, Cache. That's it. They stop and stare numbly at the food court before them, the end of the mall. Brooke groans.

"Nothing, except some really ugly ass stuff. Think…..Junior League matron department."

"This is the end of the mall. It's time to refuel and do some serious brainstorming." 

They guzzle diet Cokes and chomp their way through two acres of tasteless lettuce, ending with chocolate cones from Dairy Queen. It's their classic lunch.

"Parisian and Profitt's? Dillards?"

"Unspeakably ugly," she replies morosely. "My legs are too long for any of the dresses in the Junior's-the ones that fit me up on top end up being too short, and there were no calf length options. I won't even think about the women's selection."

Brooke pauses, slurping her Coke.

"We just have to think smart. For example, where would Lila Slater shop?"

They both pause, staring into space, and then simultaneously look at each other.

"Where does every decent debutante in a conservative southern state shop?"

They stand up, eyeballs rolling (again) simultaneously, chairs scraping back, and toss their cones.

Two minutes later in Ann Taylor's sale section, she stands there before the mirror in her big chunky foam flip-flips with rhinestones on them, looking at herself.

She's transformed.

A light peach sheath dress with a boatneck and no sleeves clings to her decently, reaching just above the knee, hiding her sharp collarbones but showing off her shoulders nicely. It's not too tight, not too beige, just snotty enough.

From behind her, Brooke strings some fake pearls around her neck and fluffs up her hair. She looks at the frozen Peyton in the mirror and frowns.

"Lose the shoes," Brooke commands, and she does, kicking them back into the stall. She moves a little awkwardly in the dress, not used to being….unsexy….but nice. Just nice. Not too glamorous or Jackie Kennedy either, just……nice.

Even Brooke doesn't heap on any Audrey Hepburn comments or anything.

"You look nice and decent," she tells her, shoving her arms into a white cardigan which miraculously, looks ok. "80 dollars total but what the hell. Marriageability isn't cheap, not as cheap as whoredom."

They both stare at it for a little while longer, and she's still unsure. Brooke nibbles on a fingernail and shrugs her shoulders.

"Kinda makes you look like a stork though," the redhead says miserably, and it's then that Peyton realizes it must be really good.

"I'll take it," she says, and tosses in the pearls for good measure. "Storks have never been accused of whoredom."

Brooke feigns disinterest, but while Peyton pays, she grabs a similar dress off the rack in a different color and a string of black pearls; half defiant, half blasé. She doesn't look at Peyton while she pays, but she doesn't need to say anything really.

They both kind of wish they were storks, so they're not going to call each other out anyway. Peyton knows this. She watches the other girl pay with her head sort of bent down, focused blindly on signing the receipt with a little flourish. Brooke sweeps past her, flashing a smile. 

"Obviously, you'll need some boring shoes now," the girl calls, and she follows with a brave little smile. 

Maybe she'll even get a purse, a real one.

Or maybe she'll get Brooke to get one for herself, and then borrow it.

She was never beyond using her anyway. She knew Brooke damn well knew she was less of a stork than Peyton.

But she knew Brooke would soon best her at that too if she chose. 

Brooke always bested. 


	11. Winning

"Fuck it Daddy I need a bra!"

These were the words that propelled Peyton into adolescence.

Her father had stood there bewildered in the pre-teen section of JC Penney. Little pink bras with light padding or training bras that looked mostly like short undershirts hung neatly from the metal racks, glaring at them innocently. She'd seen the back of his neck turn red.

"Peyton for Christ's sake, act like you got some manners! You should've just told me what the matter was instead of dragging me here and skulking around pretending to look at jeans for an hour!"

She had practically howled with grief and embarrassment. Her eyes were watery and her throat tight. She hunched over, trying to make her shirt bag out over her pointy breasts. She would've broken out into sobs if the stiff saleslady with too-tight pants over a huge, ponderous ass hadn't come lumbering up.

"Can I help ya'll? Does the young miss need a training bra?" she had cooed sweetly, trying to look maternal and inoffensive. Peyton remembers pure hatred.

"What I need is for you to buy bigger pants and not oppress me with the sight of your crack," she had replied, whereupon both her father and the lady had stood frozen in rage and humiliation. She had grabbed two bras blindly, the closest ones next to her in white and pink, and marched over to the babies department where a little old senile lady had rung them up. Her father had hurried over and paid silently, and then grabbed her by the arm and practically yanked her through the home goods section, out to the parking lot. She tore herself loose and raced to the car, tears streaming down her cheeks, and had curled up in the front seat miserably, picking at her dirty shoelace and refusing to look up.

Her father hadn't said anything else, just gone home, slammed the door, and left in his pickup later that night for another job up the river.

She had looked at those two bras then sitting on her bed. She touched them, the little eyelet straps and little pink rosebuds nestled between the flat cups that were merely triangles. They were soft and rimmed with stiff elastic, from some cheap cotton material. Carefully, she had hooked one on and stood there looking at it in the mirror for a while. She'd put her shirt on over it, and almost sobbed in relief at the subdued shape of her breasts. Instead of offensive points they were merely flat little curves under the plain v-neck tee. She had curled up then and gone to sleep in the bra, and hadn't taken it off for a week.

The next day at school Brooke told her excitedly about how her mom had took her to Parisian. She told Peyton about getting fitted, picking ones that had a little soft padding, and how her mom had taken her out to lunch afterwards and then to the cosmetics counter. She generously let Peyton have a fingertip of her new Lancome lipgloss, and told her about how her mom had made her order salad because she said that's what grown girls did.

Peyton said that was exactly how hers went too. She said her dad dropped her off at the mall with money and when she was done, they'd gone to a burger joint and he'd given her a new pair of Nikes, and told her she was a daddy's girl. They both flashed each other in the bathrooms and Brooke had told her the rosebud was cute, but hers of course, was cuter.

They had both rolled their eyes and giggled at how sappy parents where, how sentimental or stupid.

"Geez," they said, "you'd think we were sweet sixteen already or something."

Fast forward, thinks Peyton. Just like a documentary on MTV. Phony announcer: five years later, these two same girls are going through the trials of adolescence still, but things have taken a much more dangerous turn-blah blah blah more stupid shit blah blah blah. Now we tune in to Peyton's bedroom, where our subjects can be found-

Whatever. She shakes the little scenario from her head, and turns her attention back to Brooke who is waltzing around in her underwear in front of the webcam or the open window. Classic. She rolls her eyes, and focuses back on her hair. It's standing on end as usual in flyaway curls, but she's managed to smooth them down, pull them into some sort of shape. She outlines her eyes in demure brown eyeliner, flinching occasionally. Soft music blares in the background, the harsh sound almost mellow at that low a volume. Brooke is organizing her outfit.

"Black lace panties," the girl starts, laying out the delicates. Peyton rolls her eyes. "It's because after their moms give the go ahead, boys always get the urge to seduce. It's a psychological phenomenon-that's why guys pick girls that are like their mothers, or it has something to do with that……"

Peyton sighs, tuning her out.

"Here's the magic dress. The momma I'ma treat your son right dress." Brooke pauses, and then puts down some pantyhose. Peyton's eyebrows raises. 

"What?" exclaims the redhead. "Ever notice the girls at church? Wouldn't be caught dead without 'em. Here's your pearls too, you beige ballet flats, handbag, handkerchief,"

"Brooke," she interrupts. "You're overdoing this."  
The other girls pauses, looks down at the bag, and says nothing.

"Hey, how bout letting me enjoy it huh? Not like I ever get to do it." Her hoarse voice tries for carelessness, but Peyton understands, and feels a little ashamed. Brooke lays down the bag abruptly, and goes to peacock in the mirror, fluffing up her hair.

"Hey Brook-Snook, c'mere and do my makeup, how bout it?" she says softly to the other girl, reconciliatory. She watches her eyes light up, and she comes strutting over nonchalantly.

"Sure I will. Hell we both know I'm better at it. We're going for the texas whorehouse look, right? Cabaret? Just fucked supermodel? Pretty Hollywood thing playing heroin addict? Christina Aguilera?"

"Haha. Very funny. Do your best Lila on me."

The other girl bends close, and works in rhythmic silence. Peyton listens to her soft breathing, watches her face in concentration. She's always amazed at how this closeness between women is such a source of fascination for men, how their natural camaraderie and affection and physical generosity is so misconstrued and warped in the male mind. She thinks of all the times they've slept together in the same bed, curled up with their teddy bears and pictures of Nsync or Backstreet Boys. She does love Brooke, she thinks to herself. It's all she has to love, and the only thing that's ever loved her back tangibly in spite of all the pain and jealousy and anger. Her father hadn't hugged her since she was little, when IT happened. All she's ever had was Brooke. Absently, she wonders if she'll ever be able to hate her, no matter what horrible thing she does.

Then she knows for the first time that yes, it is possible.

Because as sure as hell she knows if Brooke ever touches Lucas, that they will never speak again. She feels a pain in her chest, a constriction of her throat. If Brooke takes Lucas too. I can't think about it now, she tells herself.  I won't think about it now. In the words of one famous belle, I'll think about it later. But Brooke always wins, says the permanent voice.

Brooke's always bested.

She grabs Brooke's wrist then with a fierceness she's never shown before. She's afraid, afraid of Brooke's reaction, afraid of being alone, but not more afraid than of the thought that has just landed on her like a brick. She doesn't care all of a sudden if Brooke turns on her. "Don't take no scorpion for a pet and you won't get bitten," her daddy had said once.

"You can't ever touch him," she says suddenly, her face pure stone.

The redhead pauses there frozen, watching Peyton through hooded eyes, from under her lustrous eyelashes.

"You're hurting my wrist," she replies lazily, maintaining eye contact.

Peyton feels her heart pounding madly. But she doesn't care anymore.

"If you touch him it's done Brooke. Don't get mad at me for telling you this, don't start any "stupid suspicious don't trust me" crap arguments. This is the only word I've on it. Don't do it."

The other girl pauses, then yanks her wrist away. She struggles not to narrow her eyes and let her mouth curl into a sinuous grin. The fuck I won't, she thinks.

But Peyton's face stares at her mute and stony.

Suddenly Brooke is tired. She feels a complete and quick, clean panic, then nothingness.

To be alone. To be against Peyton. To have to be friends with Lila, who'll never adore her like Peyton has. Who'll never get it like Peyton does. Whose parents are always home. To be scared all the time of being found out, of people secretly talking about her without any ally who knows the truth.

She's too tired to start there. She'd be too lonely.

"Alright," she replies softly then, the anger draining out of her. "I won't touch him. I swear double dog cross my heart hope to die stick a hepatitis needle in my eye on Jesus' tomb."

No smile from Peyton.

"Ok," the blonde girl replies then, so low she can barely hear it. They both say nothing for a moment, looking away from each other.

Blind tears secretly are stinging behind both of their eyes but neither one of them wants to say anything.

"Oh Brooke," she says all of a sudden, and they're both bawling then, sitting on the floor, Brooke curled up small and little.

"You always win," she tells her bitterly, and Peyton reels.

"Me?"

"Yeah." The pause is punctuated by sobs. "No matter what I do you'll always be prettier and always get the guy. You never had to try half as hard as I did. I liked him you know? Nathan. Ever since we were little, the duck whistles, remember? I never told you because I knew I wouldn't win. And now we're back at the beginning, and you still win."

A flood of hot tears burns in her eyes, blinding her.

"Oh Brooke," she says again, helplessly. "I wish you had told me. I wish you didn't hate me."  
They both cry, wiping at their eyes, their noses.

"I hate you but I love you too lots. I can't help being so horrible sometimes. I'm sorry I truly am." She gasps for breath, wiping her face with Peyton's bedspread. She hurls forward with shocking speed all of a sudden then, clamping her arms around Peyton's neck then, holding on tight to her. "Just don't stop being my friend ok? Please?"

Peyton nods then reassuringly, and they part, their ragged breathing the only sound in the room.

"Oh fuck-a-doodle-doo," the redhead says then wearily. "Look at your makeup. I have to start over again."

Then they both laugh, a shaky kind of laugh, looking at their mascara streaked faces and red eyes in the mirror. They both look so small and scared that they're embarrassed.

But there's also a huge relief there, a lightness both of them feel thrumming against their ribcages, lifting them off the ground.

Everything will more or less be ok now, at least for today.

Peyton knows this all may not really mean anything tomorrow.

He's there at six like he promised. Brooke's gone by now, not particularly wishing to stay and watch the "launching of the future Mrs.Scott", as she'd put it airily. She waits for the horn to honk like she always has, and is surprised to hear the doorbell, because the fact that he does this is still new to her after Nathan. When she opens the door she's overwhelmed again by him, the whole of him, length, planes, angles, features, everything; he always overwhelms her. He's so beautiful, she thinks with a pang.

He looks at her shyly, the dress, the shoes, the sullen mouth expecting a caustic remark that he'll never make.

"You look awfully gorgeous, Peyton," he says gently, and watches her eyes light up with unexpected pleasure, then quickly dim as she hides it behind nonchalance.

"Don't get used to it," is all she says, and his heart winces a little for her hurt one, always worrying ahead of time, seeking out new insecurities.

"I won't," he says simply, and sees her relax again. He opens her door, and she smiles to herself.

The Carolina night is thick and blooming with oleanders and wisterias, magnolias unfolding in the dusk, honeysuckle drifting past them. Fireflies glow like tiny stars falling to the ground, hypnotic and dancing over the darkened lawns. Lamplight spills from the windows of the houses they pass, and he parks in front of his and leads her up the steps, holding her hand reassuringly. She feels terribly afraid, Peyton who is never afraid.

Karen opens the door and smiles at her, and they all say nothing for a moment, letting themselves sink into the moment, watching the smile spread on her face. In a second, words are floating, welcoming and kind, shy in response, laughter, a grin, a hand on her elbow, and she is inside, the door shut behind her.

She's not sure of how everything should be exactly, but she tries to watch Karen and follow along best she can; she remembers to compliment the food and the house, say something nice about Lucas, smile a lot, and not curse. She feels terribly inadequate somehow, but things seem to be ok, her heart feels a little twinge of hope. After dinner, her hands slide over the edges of the frames on the hallway wall. She closes the bathroom door and looks around the small room. 

Nervously, she brushes at her face in the mirror, pushing down stray hairs, tucking and untucking her hair, dabbing at her lipgloss. The small lightbulb gives her shadows under her eyes, and she feels a little cold. She wonders what Karen thinks. What Lucas thinks. She sees the way they smile at each other affectionately, the pride in her eyes.

Fuckin' lovely and charming, her mind says, and then feels guilty for it. Quit being a jealous bitch Peyton, she whispers to the mirror.

She rejoins them on the couch, where Karen turns to her, and smiles that lovely smile again that makes her ache all over.

"Peyton, there's something I wanted to ask you. You know that I belong to the Rotary, right? It's required of all business owners in Tree Hill. What I really meant to ask is …every year there's a Coming Out Ball for all the girls turning sixteen….and I don't have a daughter to register….I saw your friend Brooke's name on the list, and I was wondering if you'd like to be in it too, with me sponsoring."

She considers this for a minute, and then feels a little twinge of joy. The River Ball.

She can hardly believe it.

"Yes," is all she can say, but Karen somehow understands, Peyton knows she understands! She can see it in her eyes. Suddenly she feels like crying again, and tiredly, she thinks of how often this has been happening since she's met this boy.

Maybe I'm thawing, she thinks. Maybe I have this iceberg in my brain and it's melting and leaking out of my eyes.

"I think Peyton's tired," he says then, grinning at her forlorn and supremely ecstatic expression, her wide, watery eyes. Karen smiles back knowingly, winking at her.

"It was nice having you. Feel free to come back anytime, and I don't mean that in a fake southern hospitality way, I mean it for real. You don't even have to ring, just come hollering at the café. Ok?"

She nods mutely, and he leads her out by her elbow, but before she steps out the door her mind leaves her and she does something that she'll burn with embarrassment upon remembering for the next month; she runs back to Karen and throws her arms around her. Mortified, she flees then, pauses awkwardly before the car door, opens it herself, and jumps in, slamming it. Her cheeks are red; she hears Karen's laugh, and then Lucas is in the car all of a sudden, grinning. She hangs her head, but he just chuckles and kisses her bare shoulder.

"Don't worry," he tells her. "That's not the first time that's ever happened. She has a magnetic field for attracting compulsory displays of affection."

She says nothing and he doesn't mind, he just turns up the radio and sings along, and she realizes that's the first time she's ever seen him so outwardly genuinely happy.

That something warm comes back and crawls into her, and stays there long after he leaves.


	12. Fragile

"Peyton".

She pauses above the keyboard, fingers poised in thought.

"Such an ambiguous name, inviting the perennial question: male or female? There are other names that a girl should belong to; Mary Cadis, Lila, Jackie, luscious, curving, pink-ribbon names. But Peyton, no, Peyton demurs. Peyton clomps in all asexual and gamine and uneasy, all sharp hips and angles and probably carrying a lacrosse stick. However, for once, I might retire the permanent dissatisfaction, because in this instance, I am at an advantage. Who knew? Evidently, the richer you are in the South, the more you name your girls after your grandfathers. And so Peyton now can sail in, right between Bondurant Ballou and Sterling Sargent, unnoticed and unremarkable in any way, thus perhaps masking the obvious – she doesn't belong there in the first place. What more could a bandit debutante ask for, except maybe to cop a feel from Moynahan Raines( our 90 year old Rotary President) under the table? The South Rises Again! Yip yip hurray!"  
She saves the document and clicks off.

She rarely deletes stuff anymore, not like she used to.

Outside, a warm spring night is blooming. The breeze gently ruffles her white lace curtains, blowing in the scent of heavy, dark honeysuckle. The twilight is ending, darkness taking over the purple lit sky, shrouding the blooming magnolia, its thick, stiff blossoms like ghosts in the yard. A single lone star hangs over the wide crown of the blossoming tree, the moon not low enough yet to see, a faint streak of long lost sunset electric blue barely hanging to the horizon. She turns a lamp on, inviting the evening in, whispering to the night. Her legs slowly curl up to her chest, her eyes closing, the warm breeze stroking her bare shoulders like lacy dogwood petals. It makes something inside her shudder.

"Frankly, it fairly makes me ache for a fuck", she thinks, and her eyes pop open stunned with surprise. A delicate blush springs to her face; she tries to push the thought away, the crass wording from which it sprang so unbidden into her mind. But a smile seizes her face, one that she can't push down, a terrible smile; she tries to push it with her fingertips, but it won't leave. With a screech she flings herself onto her bed, curling up inside herself with her mind racing, her chest cracking open because this smile, it's springing, cutting itself straight out from her heart. The ache unfolds like damp wings opening; melancholy touches her with a silent whisper, suggesting things.

The night thrums outside, the song of the crickets keeping silent rhythm, the stiff magnolia blossoms trembling, closing for the night.

She's tried so hard for so long to push this down. She's tried not to think of his sweet-shaped mouth and lean body instead of the warm hand and innocent smile he offers her. She knows that he's done the same thing, but tonight with the evening reaching her inside her room with its honeysuckle poison, the thought is back. It's opened in her and struck something hard in that secret place, fragrant like mint and tasting like sugar-bourbon, caressing, suggestive, dizzy; she wonder if he ever thinks of her that way. 

The thought makes her pale; she wants to know if he ever wakes up in the middle of the night, heart pounding, eyes damp and full, body weak and betrayed by a dream of her, sheets damp and twisted around him. She knows sometimes he's like corded iron with restraint, she knows by the thinness of his mouth, betrayal of his hand, harsh retreat.

"I want you to," she tells the evening honestly. "But I'm so afraid of ruining it all. We're not like other people, you know. Things aren't allowed to be easy."

The evening says nothing, the curtains gently dancing again, reaching towards her, a cool undercurrent fragrant and heavy with damp curling around her. There is a hint of the river.

She touches her lips, closing her eyes.

Sometimes, if she lets her mind wander into those regions, she is lost for hours.

Lila Slater's dress is watered silk, shipped straight from New York. It got packed in a box, standing upright, full of tissue stuffing; it has a Cinderella skirt and it looks "just like Jessica Simpson's wedding dress, you guys, except no daisies!" Lila flips back her pale blond hair and blinks her pale blond eyelashes, basking in the glow of attention.

Since it's gotten warmer, they've moved to the tables outside, the jocks and cheerleaders and other minor successes. Lila's marked off the cheer squad table unofficially with a big blue and white ribbon bow; they cluster here at lunch today, gazing at her either enviously or nonchalantly. She applies pale gloss and continues.

"Of course, my dad's getting me a big orchid corsage. Everyone knows anything less would just be too tacky; do you know Honey Chastain actually had roses last year? Everyone was shocked, and she was humiliated into tears; figures, anyone who names their child Honey would let her wear roses as a corsage. Peyton, you might want to take notes since you're so ….new at this."

She smiles venomously at the lanky girl sitting there, chomping on a soggy peanut butter sandwich dripping with jam. Peyton cheerfully gives her the finger and grins good naturedly, placing her fist on her chest and letting out a dainty little burp, then returning to her magazine.

Lila pauses for a moment, unsure. No reaction still. Peyton flips a page. She pales a trifle, not understanding; the table waits for the usual scenario, but there is nothing.

"I just wouldn't want you to embarrass yourself terribly, since you haven't had anyone probably train you for a twelve place setting," Lila continues sharply, and a few girls blanch at this, a muted whisper or two flying. The unspoken word, Mother, hangs in the air like a bolt of lightning. Behind a waterfall of hair, Peyton's mouth trembles and stills. Her head raises slowly, her tone even.

"I may not know an ice spoon from a soup spoon, Lila, but you don't know how to behave in public and be polite. And that makes you even less of a precious lady."

They both stare at each other,  and Lila knows her own maliciousness too well; it stares starkly back at her. The ultimate accusation, thinks Peyton. Your own weapon. For shame.

For the first time, Lila's cheeks redden and her eyes gleam wetly. She turns away quickly, and Peyton goes back to her magazine.

No one is watching now; they're all absorbed in Maimie Vandross' recount of the last lake house party where Bunny Cross threw up all over Mrs. Cross' chenille.

The two blond girls look back up at each other. Peyton is quiet and steady. Lila is thin and furious with helplessness. She turns away, joining Bunny's conversation.

Over her shoulder, before her eyes even reach him, she can feel his smile. She looks out of the corner of her eye shyly, knowing that he's watching.

His mouth forms two words: game over. The grin that follows is blinding.

The screen door bangs shut behind her, making the chain on the porch light swing in a gentle tapping rhythm against the glass.

She pauses, listening to it for a moment. How many years, how many times? The noise is an echo in her memory, stirring heavy things. Flies and moths buzz around the bulb, specks in a blinding little halo around the pale white center; outside the dark,mossy night presses in heavily, thick and damp from the river.

He's sitting in the easy chair, not particularly looking at anything, bottle of Icehouse in his hand.

She locks the door behind her, and moves silently towards the kitchen. She stands in the dark of the living room awkwardly for one second, looking at his dark outline.

"C'mere," he says, his voice coming up from the darkness, raspy. "I want to show you something."

They stand in his room. Her room. A dim light casts shabby shadows. They look at the corpse of the white thing lying on his bed.

She touches the thin, invisible bones of the basque, the silky curve of the arm, the thin, delicate skin of it. The skirt, infinite and blooming like a magnolia, feather light, spreads out covering miles of carpet. 

"It was her cotillion dress. She saved it. Said she had it when she was 17 in 1976. I dug it up from a box in the old garage."

"How come you never told me?"

He shrugs. 

"Her dad was in the Rotary. He owned a Ford dealership. She didn't want you to think she'd been better than me or somethin'. That was her way, always thinking ahead, making plans 'bout how to raise you to respect both your parents and know your ABC's and be a liberated woman and what not. It was the seventies."

His voice is heavy. Slow.

"You can take it to the shop if it needs fitting. It's kinda-fussy-I know girls now have these-dresses-without tops-"

"Strapless" she replies in monotone, staring down.

"Strapless," he echoes. She can hear his labored breathing.

"I think it's really pretty," she replies, and he breathes out, a heavy exhalation.

"Ok then," he says. "Ok then."

He's tired. She can feel his exhaustion, pressing, falling around him, crowding her out to the margins far away from him where she stands cold and alone.

Wouldn't it be, she thinks, such a perfect occasion for both of us to break into tears, hug, and start a better life? Wouldn't it?

"Oh Dad," she says then, madly. "Poor Dad. Poor Mama."

He's crying, a tall man with bent shoulders and stubble and thin legs like Peyton's, his gaunt face so sad in that nasty light. His cheeks are wet, tears dripping off his jaw. He sinks into a chair, his head in his hands, bent like an old man, crooked.

"Poor Peyton," she finishes. A pause. "Ah Daddy don't," she says dully. "Don't just now."

He stops.

They stay there frozen awkwardly, like characters in a stage play waiting for the cue.

"I see you bringing that boy around now," he says. "I hope you're being a lady. I never told you much about that but I guess now that you're seeing boys I should since she isn't around. You be good now, and don't let them come in past the porch when I'm not home, and don't let them get up too close on you. I'm no idiot, I know how boys are."

She says nothing, listening blindly. Oh Dad. If you only knew. Poor Mama. Poor Dad. Oh Peyton.

"And you mind your manners at the Rotary and don't go around making out in places where people can see you. It just doesn't seem right. Boys like nice girls – that's the kind they come back to."

She nods, unseeing, looking at that dress, the tiny waist, the elegant, fitted bodice, the three quarter sleeves and little pearl buttons.

"Sure Daddy," she tells him.

"She was…….she was … a nice girl," he says then, and his voice sags, dead and tired.

She takes the dress. It trails behind her like a dead body, stiff with tulle.

"Get some sleep before you get on the barge," she tells him. She pauses. "Luke's uncle's gonna walk me at the ball-he's in the Rotary too cause he owns the Autoshop."

He says nothing.

"Goodnight," she finishes, and closes the door.

She twists and turns on her bed, her eyes full of damp and dark and trembling. The night presses in around her, the clock keeping silent time. Oh Daddy. Poor Mama. Poor Peyton, the echo tells her, her own mad voice, crazy voice, echoing deadly in that room hitting the nastily lit wall and falling like blocks to the floor. Weak, pitiful Daddy, sad poor Daddy.

Not like me, she says to no one. I'm like Mama. 

Mama wouldn't have cried.               

Mama would've said, oh fuck it, fuck your dead whatever, you're alive, that has to be enough because that is what it is! Stand up straight Peyton and stop scratching. I love you.

She cries then, touching that silky dress, stroking it like a kitten on the chair beside her, breathing in its musty scent, daring to hold it for the first time.

She has to sometime.

I can't be hard forever, she thinks, sobbing. I have to be soft sometimes. I'm a fucking walking disaster. I'm allowed to cry about that at least.

But she's careful not to let tears get on the dress.

She can't afford dry cleaning, not for this thing.


	13. Magnolias

"Baby-in the-water……."

Her voice hums lightly in the morning silence of her room.

"Moses – in the – wa-ter….floating – in the – reeds…"

The notes travel up, pause, and come down plaintively. The silence comes back.

"That's all I remember of that part. I used to…it was a….lullabye I guess." Her tone becomes abrupt. "I don't know where it's from."

She sits up in the sheets, yawning, and gets out of bed, unfolding her long legs fluidly, her movements like a bird's, a heron maybe, pale blue shadow. She only sleeps in some underwear and a tank top. She stands before the mirror, left hip slightly cocked, and begins brushing tangles out of her hair. Her long arms move in the air gracefully, sharp elbows outward, pushing the damp, thick curls to the side.

He sits in her computer chair, swiveling slightly left-right left-right, watching her  with his chin in his hand.

"Why do you come up so early anyway? I mean I'm glad you're taking me around today, but all that stepping up through the window stuff and waiting around; having to do that would drive other dudes crazy."

He shrugs, smiling faintly.

"Just to watch you do this," he tells her honestly, and loves her for her demure, self satisfied smile, her slightly self conscious shift of balance to the other hip.

Her smile fades in a little bit, and she pauses thoughtfully.

"Baby – in the – water……came to Pharaoh's –daughter……"

"Count them three by three," he finishes abruptly and she looks up, surprised.

"My mom sang that one too," he says calmly, looking away.

She doesn't ask anything more, but observes carefully in the mirror, watching his face as he looks at the dress glistening like snow in the pale early sunlight.

"David had a – harp, played –and tended—to the sheep" she continues, less sure, voice lowered. "Played a song with these chords, count them three by three…….."

She falls silent, looking at him. 

He doesn't meet her eyes.

His fingers brush the silky fabric. He looks down at her long legs, the sharp bones that jut at her hips, the slender curve of her neck, and looks away.

"You're………sometimes I don't know how to tell you," he says hoarsely, his eyes pleading with her. She trembles, begging too, begging for the word.

"I'll wait outside while you dress," he says courteously in a moment. 

She clings to that moment after he leaves, and it vibrates in the empty room resonating. Her heart thrums in heavy rhythm.

"Jesus in the manger," she whispers, shoulders translucent, unsteady like a new, wet butterfly. "Wise men….count them …..three…"  
He had almost said it.

Almost.

Like pompoms, thinks Peyton. The rain sound.

She sways slowly to the left, to the right. The dress sways and swishes right with her.

"Sit," orders Brooke, and she does.

The redhead dabs a brush expertly on the back of her hand, and swipes it under Peyton's eyes, layering concealer thinly. A stiff, perfect stripe of black along her lid, stopping demurely at the edge of the lashes. Long sweeps of mascara. The big doll eyes emerge.

"We're going to spare you from that nasty peachy beige crap you usually wear, and go with a rosy apricot stain for the lips," Brooke tells her, wiping harshly at her mouth.

"I like my peachy beige crap," she replies, just to have something to say.

"Mouth closed," is the only answer.

A soft brush dabs at her cheeks, leaving a soft glow on porcelain skin, a hint of a flush.

She's done then, and Brooke's already steadily filling in her own lips with a classic red in the next mirror. She gazes in wonder at herself, at this glorious, glowing baby skinned girl staring back at her from behind the subtle, classic makeup.

"Wow," she tells herself. "You look great."

Brooke rolls her eyes.

"Don't let him get his hands all over it," is her terse reply.

Peyton swishes back and forth a little more.

"He never does," she says absently, watching the rustling silk. They both fall silent.. 

When she comes towards him that evening under the glitter of the chandelier, her white dress rustling softly, fully as though she were floating in a cloud, he closes his eyes. He closes them for a second because he cannot bear it; he opens them because he cannot bear to miss a moment either. He can't stand the delicacy of the willow waist, her trembling arm on his, her defiant chin, her hardened, confused eyes, her small soft smile. He cannot understand the feeling that possesses him, the terrible melancholy.

She jumps at the touch of his fingers on her dress as he tries to pin the corsage above her breast, and watches him trying to avoid the delicate embroidery, his mouth drawn in concentration. He is so close, so beautiful.

"Here, let me help," she says, and they're both unnerved by her voice. Their heads bend close, her fingers slipping around his, deftly securing the needle.

He steps back, his face unreadable.

"They're orchids. I wanted to make sure you had the right thing."

"I know," she tells him.

They both pause. A frantic Karen motions to Peyton. She opens her mouth, but he nods, anticipating, and she smiles and tries to move as fast as possible.

"You go up here," the older woman tells her. "When you hear your name called, after Bondurant, step up to the center in front of the door and meet the escort halfway. He'll hand you to Lucas at the end of the walk, where you'll both go off to the side and stand in the circle. When the music begins to play, you dance."  
"Dance?" she gasps.

It's too late and she's being pushed in a line behind Lila Slater, whose thin shoulders are pushed back proudly, back rigid. She mimics the posture nervously. Lila turns around with a benevolent look.

"You look….lovely," she says sweetly, for the benefit of anyone listening. And then, less loudly, "Almost as though you belong here."

Peyton grits her teeth and says nothing. She's too focused on not humiliating herself.

But when she walks down the long red carpet, towards him, all she can see is his face and then a strange thought passes through her mind; this is what it must be like to get married, to see him standing there waiting. The people on the side fade out in soft focus, and all she can see is his face, his dark suit, his hidden grin at her discomfort, a teasing look in his eyes. 

"Bastard," she thinks, wanting to almost laugh, then to cry.

He takes her hand and holds it innocently, and when the music plays they begin to sway back and forth carefully, imitating the couples around them. They circle around Brooke, who makes immature faces, wiggling her eyebrows until they both strain not to burst out into laughter. She's surprised at how well he can lead, and how easy it is just to follow. 

"Thanks for suffering as my escort," he tells her.

She shrugs.

"Now you owe me one," she smiles up at him, and all he can think about is how lovely the nape of her neck is, her shining hair pulled back smoothly in a double knot, pearls in her delicate ears. 

He drives her home afterwards, and goes inside. Night has fallen softly, fireflies gleaming softly around them like falling stars, the wind whispering through the blossoming trees under a clear sky. She does not turn the light on in the living room but goes straight to her room, heart pounding. Her window is open, the curtains fitfully moving, swelling and falling like tall, lacy ghosts. She turns on a small lamp that glows a dark gold, weak as a candle, throwing deep shadows, inviting the night to come in instead of alienating it. A wind from the river comes in, cool and green and dark.

"Please help me with the buttons," she asks him, and he does not refuse.

They start at the top of her back, small and pearly, down to her waist. He takes his time with each one, fingers unsteady as each inch of pale skin comes into view. When he is done, he steps back. 

She feels shy all of a sudden and does not know why. She's never been shy before, and is surprised by this new, nervous feeling.

"I'll wait outside," he says, and when the door is closed between them, they both slump in agony. 

"You can come in now," he hears her soft whisper from the other side of the door.

When he opens the door slowly, it is dark inside the room. Only a dim hint of the orange streetlight creeps in through the window, illuminating the shape of things in the darkness. 

They both climb up on the bed, and she opens the window. Her long legs pour awkwardly out of a cotton night slip ages too old for her, hanging precariously from the hunched shoulders.

They can hear the sounds of the school band from the football field, muted and distant, like a whisper hiding behind the voice of the wind. The smell of fresh cut grass and river mud curls around them, spring damp. 

In the dark, neither of them says anything, just listening to the far away sound of brass, of people, the sound of their childhoods like a ghost in the distance.

"I used to listen to this every Friday night," she tells him, her voice coming from the shadows as though disconnected from her somehow. "Wondering what it'd be like to be one of them. I thought everything would work out once I got to high school, once I had friends."

He knows. He did the same thing.

"Were you ever lonely?" she asks, and her voice is small and seven again, on that evening lit sidewalk, watching him standing there with the ball.

He considers this for a moment.

"Yes," he concedes, but gives no more.

Her small hand creeps into his quickly and guiltily, almost subconsciously; they sit there, frozen in a paroxysm of wanting and memory.

Her cheeks are tear damp. She stares at the dress that's hanging like a stiff white ghost from her closet door.

"It was hers."

He quickly looks at her face, but it is still as ever, expressionless. He can see the gleam of her full, damp eyes.

"You were beautiful in it," he tells her gently, wishing he knew something more to say. She looks down at their hands clasped tightly together, laying between them.

"She was good, you know? A proud person."

He hides a little smile.

"You take after her."

He hears a small hiccup, and her head moves side to side in a violent negative motion.

"No I don't."

There is a pause.

"If…..if I did, you wouldn't be in my bedroom," she finishes bitterly.

He considers his answer carefully.

"It's an honor."

He feels her stiff shoulder next to his slowly relax, little by little.

They lay down in the dark on top of her cover, listening to the far away sound, letting the night air cradle them, his fingers gently tracing her face. She kisses his palm, eyelids lowered in pain, sorrow.

"I didn't think you would understand all this. I didn't think you would want to," Peyton tells him, and she realizes at that moment that it is the truth.

"I didn't know that I would either," he replies pensively. "But I think……I think I wanted to try."

She curls her knees up, and his hand touches her ankle, light and quick as a firefly.

"Half a year since that night at Nathan's house when we were about to fuck for no reason at all," she whispers and he is jolted by the recollection uncomfortably, by the word. It's escaped from her petal lips so innocently, such a hard cornered word. He shifts beside her, wondering what to say.

"I'm glad we didn't," he decides to tell her, and is relieved by her smile. "I'm glad….you let me ….come around."

They both lapse into a small reverie. 

"It's nice having you around," she says absently, unfinished.

Abruptly, he sits up on one elbow.

"Peyton, my offer still stands."

Her heart pounds thickly.

"Offer?"

He shakes his head softly.

"I want everything," he says once again, and she remembers his exact words. The way he had stood there before her, half pleading, half determined, all serious.

But this time she isn't frozen in fear. Instead she feels that twinge again, that light, helium feeling in her chest grasping and rising dizzily.

"Ok," she says simply, and they both sit up, not knowing what to do with this. Her arms fold across her stomach gently, tightly inwards towards herself, and he reaches out almost instantly and pries them away; holding her shoulders, he kisses her then with everything he's ever wanted to say to her unspoken on his lips. The weight of this kiss hits her like a current, stunning her into silent submission.

They both feel the ecstatic, terrible beat of their hearts, the awkwardness and promise and ecstasy, the intoxicating nearness of each other.

"I don't have …anything for you," he tells her hopelessly, lost.

She laughs, surprised at the sound of her own voice.

"You're acting crazy," she giggles, feeling her eyes welling up with tears, but she knows this time it's not sadness.

He pauses, then springs to his feet, and with one swift movement, slides out her window feet first. She gasps, leaning out of it. His form fades in the darkness, and she can see the white shirt, the moving shape of his back but it is indistinct. She crawls back into bed, confused, elated, half choked with fear and happiness and dizzy with …..love.

"Love," she says, mouth numb, disbelieving.

She hears the curtains rustle, and the thatch of blond hair appears.

"Get back into bed," he commands and she grins at the delicious thrill that surprises her at the sound of this order. She scampers back, sitting against the headboard.

She feels him suddenly pull her feet and then with a gasp she hits the mattress, flat on her back; his mouth is suddenly on hers, fierce and insistent and she feels a small twinge of fear. He draws back quickly though, and then something cool is on her mouth instead; she quickly puts up her hand to catch this falling thing, and feels the paper thick petals of a …..flower. She cannot see it in the dark, but she recognizes the green scent of magnolia, the pristine whiteness of the petals visible.

His hands run up her legs then, and do not stop at the flimsy hem. With a gasp, she feels the cotton slide up brusquely to her chest, laying there bunched; she feels the cool air on her legs and stomach. She shudders, wanting to yank it back down, eyes burning, but then realizes he's not touching her.

When she stops trembling, she sees his head bend down gently and feels the light kiss that lands in the corner of her hipbone. His palm slides down the concave hollow of her stomach, brushing the fragile ribs, skin like paper magnolia, white in the shadows.

Then something cool touches. Her whole frame shudders, thrumming, electric at each touch, weakly unresisting. But his hands are gone; in their place, chaste white blossoms are landing from his hands. He pulls her knees up, so that they'll stay in that small valley, and heaps them up to her neck, some crushed and missing petals, some perfect and whole in their ghostly radiance.

Dizzy and afraid of herself, she lays there, each nerve vibrating invisibly, waiting; he does nothing more, but places a kiss on her forehead as cool and chaste as the blossoms.

He lays down beside her, his head curving into the hollow of her neck, his lips close to her skin so she can feel the slight breath when he speaks.

"There, I've brought you flowers," he murmurs, and she feels a tear slide down her cheek and into the cool pillowcase.

She waits a while before she can speak. With one hand, she lifts a blossom to her mouth, her tongue touching the gold-fragrant center, tasting it's green, crushed creaminess; she remembers being thirteen and doing this, wondering if that was what kissing was like. Another tear escapes. She is delirious with happiness.

When she can trust herself to speak, she looks down her cheek at him, nestled there so close to her. His eyelids are closed; he seems asleep.

"I love you," she says then, and is shocked.

She feels him move sleepily, and slowly breathes with relief. She listens to his slow, even breath, notices his still shut eyes, and her heart starts beating again. But she does not want to take it back immediately; and at this thought she has to bite her hand to keep from laughing out loud with joy.

She relaxes, looking up at the ceiling, feeling her body flood with peace.

Beside her, he moves again, nuzzling into her neck.

"I love you too," he replies then, very clearly.


	14. The River

"Fuck him yet?"

"Nope."

"Aren't you allowed to now? Haven't you got the 'whole thing'?"

A shrug. She chews on her split ends, something that always Brooke wince.

"I don't know. I don't know anything."

The redhead looks away.

"Let's hope you haven't forgotten how. It'd be pretty bad if it sucked after all this trouble. What're you gonna do if it does?"

She looks away, smiling faintly to herself.

"It won't."

Summer descending on Carolina reminds her scraped knees and mint iced tea, or of the bell on the door of the Veach gas station. She lets her eyelids fall closed, thinking of the shadows of the dusty interior, the gas pumps watching silently from outside. She used to steal candy with Brooke from there all the time (Stop being such a hotbox, Peyton! Dammit, go stand by the Slurpees, you so suck at this). 

They were 12 when Brooke finally taught her how.

Brooke would stand by the counter with a pack of gum and smile up at 16 year- old Ricky Lemoine, who always looked at her a little bewildered, half amused, half cautious. 

Her smile was like the world opening to you back then, and it would spring slowly and widen, glowing, as though the sun had cracked open and you could see into heaven. 

She'd cross one foot in front of the other,  bending her ankle and cocking her hip playfully, propping up her bony elbows on the counter so you could see an inch of damp, creamy skin and the lacy edge of a cotton cup, her hair falling into her eyes.

Ricky always looked away, and you could hear that small dry sound of his tongue unsticking from the roof of his mouth right before he spoke. He'd take a swig of his Coke and announce in a bored tone, "50 cents."

She'd plunk down two quarters, and grab his Big Gulp, curving her candybox lips around the straw, leaving a glossy little circle of pink strawberry lip-balm. Wiping her mouth, grinning, she'd saunter out, Peyton awkwardly following, tossing a nervous half-smile towards Ricky who'd salute her a little sarcastically and then look down at his straw, and pull at his shirt collar.

They'd go sit on the curb by First Baptist then, and Brooke would pull out the loot; Sugar Daddies for her, Sour Patch gummies for Peyton, Bubblicious gum for both of them so they could compete for biggest bubbles, lollipops so that Brooke could flirt.

In that world, it was always June, the marshes springing up fragrantly, the herons landing softly on the surface, breaking the perfect reflection in the evening.

"I'm going to be sixteen soon," Brooke would announce to her sometimes on those evenings, when they sat on her porch in the dark, looking out at the yard filled with the lacy white ghosts of dogwoods softly hovering in the gloom. "Only four more years. Then everything's going to be perfect, and Ricky Lemoine will stop charging me fifty goddamn cents."

Peyton would say little, and pick at the mosquito bites on her ankles.

Brooke would then look at her curiously, her eyes gleaming oddly in the dim light.

"Aren't you excited?"

The intimacy is sometimes too much for them to hold, this immense thing between them, half-realized and half waiting. They stave it off with conversation, hiding behind words and light touches, dancing around each other intricately in fear of coming too close, avoiding small spaces.

The kitchen, for example.

"Tell me first."

He looks at her quizzically, and shrugs an ok. He points to the pot in her hand.

"Fill it with water."

She complies.

"Put it on that burner over there. We'll use the front one. Got a match?"

She produces one with a flourish that makes him smile. 

"Turn it on like this."

"I don't see anything. Is it on?" 

He laughs silently.

"You light the match like this……and then come close…..be careful!"   
She yowls, flinging the match, and it falls in the sink, hissing.

He examines her fingers, ignoring the urge to forget the stove. Her hands smell like wet grass and charcoal. The match is smoking a little in the sink.

He lights another match, and with an expert flick, lights the gas flame, drawing back just in time. She pouts.

"Put the water on the flame and add a little salt – more – perfect. Now you've got to wait till you see big bubbles and it starts moving. That means it's boiling."  

She presses her lips together petulantly.

"I think I could figure that out, Emeril."

They cross each other delicately, moving to the side to make room for each other's body, eyes bent away from that infinity and proximity of space. She heads toward the fridge, he towards the cabinets. The dance. Her face is hidden behind her hair. He takes down the spaghetti from a shelf, and she smells a long-ago opened jar of tomato sauce.

"Still good,"she grins, swiping some with her finger. He looks away, rubs his neck with his hand. Pausing for a moment, he seems to remember the pasta, and pulls it out, checking the water.

"Alright. It's close to boiling – take it and break it in half, unless you like humiliation."

"Humiliation."

"Super," he says. "I'm fond of it myself." She watches him drop it in, crunching on an uncooked strand. She bends close to inhale the steam, and jumps back a little.

"It's hot!"

"No, really. I'd prefer it if you didn't unclog your pores over my dinner."

She stifles the urge to laugh.

"Next: are you aware of how to make a salad?"

She looks at him incredulously.

"Right," he replies. "Speaking to a cheerleader. But I can bet you're never cut your own tomatoes."

Her doubtful look gives her away, and she sighs, bringing out two sad tomatoes and a half-shredded head of lettuce. She massacres the first one in her usual style. He shakes his head as though deeply distressed.

"Here," he says lightly, moving to stand behind her. She feels the stiffening in her body when it is too aware of his presence. Her elbows draw closer to her sides, a softness in her knees starting. His hand takes one of hers, placing her fingers on one side of the tomato.

"Thumb on top," he says, but she can sense the change in his voice, the underlying tension. "Index finger on top of knife," he says, placing his over it. His hands cover hers almost entirely. The tip of the steel slices cleanly through the red, two halves, than four fourths. "Too tight," he says, and she clenches numbly. "You're holding it too tight – squishing it – easy- there."

Eight slices. Tomato juice on her fingers. Cold blade of the knife, his warm hands. Neither of them is moving now; they stand still as statues. She's ruined only one slice, the seeds fallen  away from the flesh, leaving a perfect, empty half moon. His head falls a little forward towards the back of hers, eyelids half closed. She looks down mutely.

The water on the stove boils over with a sudden harsh hiss, making both of them jump.

"The sauce," is all he says, moving away, and she feels empty suddenly. Like a perfect half moon.

Friday night, after the game, he comes by late after the sun has set and evening's become night.  The moon gleams oddly above the black-crowned trees, throwing shadows onto the grass, and he seems at first to be one before she recognizes the distinct movement, the roll of his walk.

She opens the door and lets him in silently before he even knocks, time moving fluidly between them like a ghost which reads both of their minds.

In the darkness of her living room, they stand like shadows, breathing, listening to each other. She hears the sound of a soft movement, and he puts his hand on the door.

"Get a jacket," he tells her. "It might get cold."

She obeys.

He pulls her along rapidly, his fingers circling her wrist, and she opens her mouth to protest but nothing comes out; inside her there is something thumping, like the heart of the butterfly inside the cocoon before that terrible moment.

The branches of the azalea bushes in the front yard brush past them like fingers; the moon reaches out towards them, slivers of light caressing their faces in rapid, dizzy succession. He slams her car door shut and leaps into the driver's seat, reversing violently out of the driveway. She primly keeps her mouth shut.

The cicada chorus echoes in snatches when they have to slow down for a turn or a stop sign. The night is black and silent, houses sleeping around them, one lone red stoplight swinging mutely in the thick air. He turns onto a road she remembers suddenly, sharply, a narrow two-lane where the tall field-grass grows on both sides, crowding the asphalt. The headlights sweep the darkness, the sweet marsh scent entering and leaving her rolled-down window, snatched by his sudden acceleration.

She doesn't ask where they are going.

He stops the car in a place she knows very well. When the engine cuts and the headlights die, they are left in silence and darkness, only the chorus of the crickets and tree-frogs filling the moist air, louder, drowning out their erratic breathing.

  
"Marsh Downs?" she finally says in a whisper, but it isn't really a question.

He pulls her out of the car and into the night, and they race under the thick-hanging mossy trees; he pulls her along at breakneck speed, the branches whipping past them, the reeds whispering secrets in the darkness. She can only see shadows where the moon slithers through, and she feels as though they are really in a dream and not existing at all. Her feet don't seem to touch the ground; his fingers hurt around her wrist but she doesn't even notice. The crickets are screaming, a lone firefly like a warning signal suddenly blazing in the mute, black chasm to her right.

"Lucas," she tries to say, but the words don't come out. She wonders for a second if she has even spoken them. 

Then they are in a clearing, and the wind from the marsh hits her, cool and clear. The water ripples darkly under the moon for what seems like an eternity, stretching out before them into an infinite lake that pours off what must be the edge of the earth. The hot air trembles around them, thick with the dark and the ink of the river.

"I used to come out here too when we were younger," is what he says at last. "I remember the first time I saw you. You stood up to your knees in the water, in the evening, and you were red and gold and pink like the sky, with electric blue streaks around your legs; your hair was wild and pale looking. You…looked like a reed….."

She shivers beside him silently.

"I was in love with you then," he finishes at last, and his voice breaks oddly, low and quiet and thick on the last word, painful. She is seized by something horrible, tearing at her throat, making her eyes fill with hot, thick tears. There is a hunger in her then, unfolding in her chest, her stomach, her mouth, to touch him, hold him tightly. She turns to him with eyes wide and dark, gleaming like the moon on the river. The reeds stir, rustling by the shore in the humid air. 

Quietly, she peels off her shirt. She's aware of the thin, shabby undergarments underneath, the infantile daisy between the cups of her bra, the plain, slightly frayed cotton, the bruises on her knees. She steps out of her pants, folding them neatly and placing them on the ground.

He watches her mutely.

She reaches towards him like a chastised child, humbly, with her head bowed. Her hands undo the buckle of his belt, and pull his shirt up over his head, and down the length of his arms. The pale glow of the moon makes him seem marble, and she shudders at the sight of the beautiful symmetry, the maleness of him, the angles and planes of his torso and the shift of muscles under skin, all those things that move something tight and hungry in her.

She looks away as he steps out of his jeans. She is walking towards the water now, and he opens his mouth to say something but before the words come out she has disappeared.

Gone.

Her body, pale like a night moth, just turned into a heron and dove cleanly under the black, slicing the inky water. The slight wave lapped against the bank. A reed nodded.

He feels himself gripped by sudden fear. He races towards the bank, diving into the water. Underneath, in the deaf, mute darkness, he feels something brush past his stomach, light as a firefly.

His head breaks the surface with a gasp. The first thing he sees is her, floating there, watching him. 

They crawl up on the bank into the hot, silky air, shivering a little. The wet cotton is plastered to both of them, and he can see the transparency of her skin, and then it is pressed against him. She is warm, alive, murmuring, crying; words come out of her mouth then, begging, pleading with him, but the only one he can truly distinguish is 'please'. The hot night presses in on them and her leg slides between his, and he's pressing into her, pushing her down into the ground now, his mouth buried in her neck, her hands grasping at his back. She's telling him things now, words that burn themselves into his mind, his body, making it hard to breathe, words that make her delirious. 

"Don't move," is the only thing he can whisper.

But she does, pushing herself against him and it's over then for him; he shudders and collapses, hanging his head. She trembles under him, and he suddenly and violently pushes the heel of his palm upwards between her legs; he feels her jerk quickly, and hears a clear, ragged cry.

Neither of them moves from the bank.

Their wet, heated skin is pressed together, the grass and dirt of the bank against her back, the river whispering and rustling beside them. 

They're frozen inside her eternity.

She says his name in two syllables then, her voice terribly odd, clear, almost melodic, before she goes limp underneath him. The heavy sound of their breathing mingles with the  scream of the cicadas.

He lifts his head from her chest where it's sunk dizzily, and for the first time that night they kiss; a slow, quiet, long kiss, tasting of tears and river water.


	15. The Night Moth

He never spoke out loud in class.

That is something Peyton remembers very quickly and suddenly, violently almost, upon waking up on a Sunday morning.

She was having a nightmare; she cannot remember what it was about but she can feel her heart beating its fists against the walls of her ribcage. His face was there, and it was gone suddenly, and when she sat up the world fell away from her in one clean motion and dropped into blank eternity.

She opened her eyes and screamed.

It was morning. Pale sunlight greeted her, the yellow walls of her room, the deathly still edge of the lace curtain, the cool metal of the bed frame.

She breathes in and out, looking around her at her silent room. The cool yellow. The edge of the lace. 

He never spoke out loud in class, is what comes to her mind then, and she curiously examines this random thought, tries to connect it to the dream she cannot remember from minutes ago without success.

Why didn't he?

Maybe she just didn't notice. He was so quiet all the time. Quiet and golden. Twelve years old, ignoring Lila's silky, chipped pink-polish fingertips on his arm. Tawny golden skin; wiry, hard-wrought body. Slender, downy, like a lion cub, his pale hair brilliant in the late afternoon sunshine in Mrs. Hadney's math class.

That's how she remembers him.

They had all been so curious about him back then, because they were so raw and nervous and aware, twelve, then thirteen, than fourteen. Because they were so sensitive to beauty, to power. To mystery.

He seduced them, and rejected them. They coiled back, retaliated.

It had been a game among Lila and Brooke back then, in seventh, eight grade. Who's gonna kiss Lucas first. They didn't understand – couldn't understand why he didn't bask in their flattery, sit on top of the cafeteria tables wearing his letter jacket, being loud and funny and throwing paper wads, swaggering like Nathan and the rest of the team. They didn't get why he was always playing pick-up games during lunch break, instead of flirting with them.

Why he actually did his homework. Why he had to go home and work at the garage instead of hanging out in the parking lot. Why he was never home when they called.

When Mrs. Hadney had left the room that day to take a phone call, Lila's cool hand had crept up from behind him and slid along his arm slowly, her silky blonde hair falling forwards toward his shoulder.

Her candy pink lips had curved upwards slowly, sweetly, subtly.

He turned in his desk then, not moving his arm away at all, and just looked at her. His eyes said nothing – they were not angry, proud, scornful, flirtatious, or amused.

They were just honest. He looked at her with something between curiosity and pity.

Her hand had snatched back as though burnt.

The lips had curved downward.

He just turned back to his homework, undisturbed, unconcerned.

Lila had smacked her gum five times in a row, like a machine gun. Peyton could smell the hot, pink bubblegum flavor in Lila's mouth.

They all stood around her at recess, too afraid to say anything. Lila's arched, sharp-bow mouth dared them. She caught Brooke's lazy smile, and pink rose in her pale cheeks suddenly and sharply. 

"He's probably queer," she had suddenly said, loudly, and they knew Lucas must be somewhere near. He was walking by with Jake, dribbling a ball. "Or maybe he's scared of girls, being such a pubescent and all."

Her cheeks were flaming, burning for Lila then. When Peyton looked up, she was surprised to see Lucas and Jake's pitying, scornful expressions fixed on the small group of girls before they passed by. Lila stared at their backs furiously.

Peyton looked away from her because her heart was suddenly spastic. 

He had looked at her for a second. 

He had seen the embarrassment on her face for Lila, the unspoken apology.

And he had looked her straight in the eye, and a faint shadow of a smile had passed his lips then, a real smile.

A smile meant for her exclusively. Not the pitying sneer for the rest of them.

A smile for her.

Something had jumped, hard and quick in her stomach, or maybe somewhere lower. She watched his quiet, slinking, lion cub gait as he got further and further, and disappeared around the corner. Her blood thrummed.

She had looked up quickly then, and seen them all looking at her, Lila staring silently. The girl's lips began to curve upwardly then, slowly, cruelly, gently.

"Well Peyton," she drawled then, stretching the words sticky like toffee. Her pale eyes were fixed on her own panicked ones.

So she'd seen.

"What?" she had blurted.

Her voice had caught though. Her voice had rasped at the end.

Everyone looked away, sorry for her.

"What?" Lila mimicked her, that same little rasp. A nervous twitter rose from the group and died suddenly. "C'mon Peyton, do you have some dirty details to share? A secret?"

That was when it had all had started, Lila's purity, her snow white cleanness. 

Peyton knew Lila hated her for making her have to take that road.

It was the only road left.

Peyton had won the other one.

But she didn't know that back then. She wishes she had understood all this back when it would have counted.

That she hadn't wasted so much time.

She's aware now of how smart he had been, how acutely perceptive even at such a young age. How he had held back, refrained from courting their adoration, knowing that once Nathan found out the tide would turn violently. He had known that all the attention from the girls would then just result in more insults, more hatred, more cold metal lockers against his face. He knew that soon enough Nathan would realize the truth, and lash out in blind anger; and when he did, whoever stood by him would receive the blunt end of it also.

And so he never spoke to her, never looked at her again, never encouraged her to remember that moment.

She knows now that he had loved her even then.

The night swallows everything when it falls, everything outside turning into specters and shadows, the air thick with humidity and pure blackness. He comes, inside the screened-in verandah and to her door in his silent, cat-like way. 

She comes out, her skin dark and sheen from sweat. Baby hairs stick to her temples, her hot neck. She throws herself down in front of a fan that clatters at intervals, turning slowly on its axis, barely stirring the leaves that are growing, crowding through a torn screen onto the inside of the porch. The mosquito screen is full of holes, the door open, hanging rickety. Her long legs hang there, sprawled over the ratty wicker furniture. There is a stack of old magazines on the table; the wrinkled pages rise slightly as the fan turns,  then float back down like dead moths.

A canned laugh track echoes from inside – the tv is on at low volume.

Her thin arms with their sharp shoulders are propped on her elbows at weird angles. Uncomfortable angles.

A single dim lighbulb buzzes sporadically over her head, and he waits half hidden in the shadows. She stands up abruptly and reaches up with a long arm (like a spider moving and shifting all at once), and pulls the string. They are suddenly in darkness. The warm light from the kitchen, yellow and square and safe fills the doorway and cuts a pathway to the porch steps. 

He moves slowly, like a ghost, a warm, living shadow creeping towards her, silently pulling her into the shadow, away from the block of light in the door.

The fan clatters, turning away from them. The thick jasmine blossoms wait, deathly white and still, hidden in the darkness. They are folding themselves quietly into a corner, fading away from the light and the sound of the tv inside, from the phone ringing twice, then the machine tape playing.

All these become dull and far away, and then disappear into silence.

They retreat slowly into that dark and private corner, moving back deeper and deeper into the darkness, until they come against the wall.

There is an old dresser on one side, ornately carved, forgotten, covered in dust.

Ripped screen stretched between two posts. Thick, waxy, white camellia blooms coming through a tear, their dark green leaves like fingers opening the netting.

Nothing but the sound of their breathing.

Of their lips opening, like the sound of a night moth wings' unfolding.

The night before flashes behind their closed eyelids for the precise thousandth time that day. She feels his body contract, tighten against hers, drawing back. The night moth flutters lower in her, and settles down between her hipbones, wings spread. She smells the dust, the sweet and dangerous honeysuckles, the clean scent of his skin, and presses against him, pinned into her corner. A sound escapes his throat that makes her tremble.

His hands are on the back of her thighs, and she clenches her legs obediently (one-two-three, up! All those years) and she's suddenly hoisted up against the wall, his hands under her, holding her up. His hands cup her bottom, but she wraps her legs around his waist and shifts her weight off them, freeing them. 

They stay frozen for a moment like that, her pinned in that corner to him, like a moth on the wall in the darkness, his mouth on her damp neck, both of them trembling. Her head droops forward, and rests against his, her petal mouth on his ear, whispering words, words that mean nothing together and everything apart.

Please.

The crickets screaming. Chorus rising. The silence of that dark and secret corner. Her hand on the back of his head, the other spread on his back, oddly sacred in their arrangement, position.

"I couldn't…..I couldn't even sleep – last night" he murmurs wretchedly into her neck, the words muffled there, pressed into her skin; their plaintive tone strikes her numb. "Peyton I'm going crazy – I'm sorry I can't stop this – please tell me if I'm going too far-"

These fragments stop and start like the quick pulse of the firefly, the avalanche of tortured whispers brushing against her skin. She shudders then, and groans, unfreezing suddenly. He is apologizing, not asking for more. He is asking for permission, he is asking for forgiveness. 

She writhes in agony under him, throwing her head back to the wall, tipping it backwards and closing her eyes. Her body pulses against him.

Please. Please. Please. The moth moves, restless. The night presses to them, hot and suffocating. 

"Oh don't," she hears her own moan, her own voice begging him to forget himself. She feels the muscles of his stomach tighten against her open legs and screams silently.

Please Lucas. Please forget permission. Just take. Please forget asking. Just take.

"I couldn't take my mind off it today – if you knew it would scare you –every two minutes, Peyton, your face, the lake water, the ground. I tried-"

"Shh," she pleads, and he twists her hands away from him, pinning them back to the wall. They are dangerously close to forgetting everything.

The world closes down, turns off, and fades into the night outside the porch.

Time sinks into the lake. Moonlight gleams on the water, then disappears.

She slips.

It is the hard, brusque motion as he catches her, or the sudden friction, or the hard edge of his belt.

Dizziness.

She felt the moth unfold its wings. Slow, calculated.

"Peyton?"

His voice, as though from far away. Something coming. Something coming quickly like a tidal wave, suddenly enormous and  then – the chasm opens-the massive wings beating inside her, taking flight – she can't stop it ( torn ragged, a wail from her throat) she's shaking against him – (please. Please).

And then, quiet.

She falls limp against him, hiding her face in his neck, sliding down, her feet once more touching the floor.

She is still held up by him. 

A screen door bangs.

They freeze immediately.

"Peyton?"

Blood rushes to their heads, their hands, their heart again. His eyes gleam in the darkness, and she lurches quickly forward.

"Stand in front of me," he tells her quietly, and she feels the blood rise to her cheeks, understanding.

The yellow block of light in the kitchen door is suddenly blacked out, and then the sound of a string pulled, and the dim lightbulb springs the whole porch into vivid detail.

"There you are," the voice says. Two kind eyes blinking, a little dazed at the harsh light.

"Hey Daddy," she says dully. A quick, nervous smile is found, and lost just as rapidly on her face.

The tired eyes take her in, her pale face, awkward elbows, bitten mouth.

The boy is sitting on the wicker couch, elbows on his knees, hands clasped, looking away.

He reaches up, and pulls the string, plunging them all into darkness again.

"Good to see you, doll,"  he says then. A pause. "How're you doing, son?"

"Fine, thank you sir," comes the reply from the couch. The tone is steady.

The older man in the doorway nods to the indistinct shadows. He looks at her. Her eyes gleam wetly in the dim light.

"I'm glad you're home," she says simply.

"Good night," he replies.

"Good night."

They watch the kitchen screen door slowly swing shut.

"I'd better go," he says, and his voice is low and desperate in the darkness. They are both dazed. "I think I'd better not kiss you goodnight."

She crosses her arms awkwardly over her stomach. She follows him to the end of the driveway, beneath the darkness of an old oak.

They both look at the living room windows.

His voice suddenly cuts quickly through the silence in a low whisper, close to her ear.

"Did….back there….did you –"

"Yes," she cuts him off, tremulously.

They stand there, weak with desire. Night. Jasmine. Dust. A clattering fan. Darkness.

And she runs up the driveway, light and quick, pale like a moth, and pauses on the front steps to look back at him for a moment. Then she is gone.

He waits until he is home to collapse to his knees.


	16. Rain

Friday nights are like this.

When she jumps, suspended in midair, sometimes she sees the world slow down, roll to a halt, and move thickly forward through honey-colored time. She can hear the sudden swell and roar, the sound behind her coming quickly towards her, hitting her back like a wave, knocking the air out of her, and a second later she's back on the ground and everything's quick and dizzy and shrieking again, back to normal.

She knows he's scored again. They stand up for him now, watching him with their eyes aflame; when her eyes follow him, she blanks out the sounds of the crowd, the raining and rustling of the poms, Brooke's confident voice next to her.

She pretends complete silence, in which she can hear only the sound of the ball hitting the floor and his feet hitting the wooden floor. He floats before her, his body so oddly angled and smooth, sliding between them all as though they were planted, dipping, rising, soaring, sideways, and then,

Air.

His body, just pinned there in time like hers; she jumps at the same moment, feeling the exaltation of takeoff, the hard slam back down to earth.

The crowd is deafening.

She always does a little dance for him now, teasing, smiling, moving quickly and subtly, her hand brushing the back of her skirt and rising up languidly to her stomach; a rapid switch to the other hip to make the skirt flip, a little shimmy. She always cops out at the end, unable to hold back her laughter and he always grins widely and shakes his head at her. They always both quickly check to make sure no one has noticed.

She's never felt so golden in her entire life.

So priceless. 

She remembers a long lost thought from the beginning of this.

Midas.

The crowd roars again.

The game is ending

She doesn't tell Brooke about what happened by the lake, in the porch. She closes it all up inside herself and tries not to think about it during the day, or when she sees him. It's hard not to-she's never known just how hard before. Never had to be silent.

Because this, this is not before.

This is clean. Pure. Secret.

She marvels at the power he extends just by his presence. The fact that he can make her body violently betray her without the drawn-out effort other boys had to put it; all he has to do is come close just so, touch her neck just then, part her legs just like, and the pressure builds erratically, the warning twinge announcing itself. 

She's afraid of her own invincibility, but even more so at his selflessness.

He hasn't asked for anything. Yet, she says to herself, willing herself to see him like all the others. Yet. It's a matter of time, she tries to convince herself, because she is afraid that he could be different. That he really won't shove her face to the wall or maybe push her head down into his lap in a movie theater. Like Nathan. Like all of them.

That he won't be that way, and when he isn't, that she won't know what to do.

But worst of all, that she'll despise him for it.

Try to provoke him out of frustration and fear.

Try to tell herself that he is like all of them.

But all along, she knows she'll hate herself if she does this.

They are lying on the old futon he dragged out onto her porch. Her air conditioning broke this week, and no one is home to fix it or pay for repair. She sleeps outside here at night, with a mosquito net hanging from the ceiling around the bed like a white harem cloud. It curtains ghostlike around them, and hangs still and transparent and full of heat and privacy and something vaguely feverish. When they crawl onto the cotton sheets behind the gauzy walls, it feels like another world 

"And then……." 

"Then Lila's dad went and sat out on the patio where Brooke was swimming in the pool. She was wearing red lipstick and a red ruffly bikini and red heart-shaped sunglasses. We were twelve."

 "Wow, how Fast Times at Ridgemont of her."

"Yeah, that's what she said too when she took a look at herself in the mirror. Anyway, she did the whole Phoebe Cates comes out of the water thing. He's watching, and his expression is odd; it's puzzled, and afraid, and amazed, and secret. He looks uncomfortable, but he looks so sad, yearning almost. He tells the maid to bring the iced tea, sits back and crosses his legs. Brooke's standing there like Miss New Jersey with the crown and the boquet, dripping water on the parquet."

"Parquet?"

"I know, right. Lila's mom is such a nut to have the living room wood floor extend out past the French doors and to the pool. She did it to make a dance floor for her cocktail parties, so she can light tiki lanterns and waltz by the water."

"Crazy," he murmurs, leaning his head into her neck.

It's evening outside. The crickets are starting, but it's still inside the veranda. They lay there, covered in a light sheen of moisture, half-clothed and barely touching, tangled in the billowy white folds of the soft net. She thinks of a tropical place, like India, the dark night waiting outside and a candle flame flickering in a palace.

His head is perilously close to her neck, his eyelids half closed with heat and drowsiness and heavy with something still and secret. Her heart beats out a hard, measured little rhythm, as though she is holding her breath. He shifts a little, and she can feel the heat rise off his body. The lady- of -the -night flowers are unfolding, poisoning the air with a heavy fragrance.

Their arms are lying next to each other, millimeters away.  Damp skin next to damp skin. His fingers brush her wrist.

"Crazy," she forces herself to reply evenly. " She flicks her hair back, and smiles this big, red, strawberry-jammy smile and he crosses and uncrosses his legs again, still looking at her. Lila's standing there holding the drink tray and her face is so strange; I remember noticing this goldy down on her upper thighs, baby hairs,  catching the sunlight a little. She pushes right past me and she's being loud and screechy and laughing, and she grabs Brooke and jumps in the pool and drags her right in. Mr. Slater sits forward suddenly like so, startled looking, shocked, petrified."

His eyelids seem to lift a little in anticipation.

"And then…?" he prompts again.

"Then he looks at me, and sees me watching him. His face goes still, and he gets up and stands there for a second, as though he doesn't know what to do with himself."

"Does Brooke come up?"

"She tries, but when her head pops up, Lila pushes it under, and she's laughing."

His eyes open now, watching interestedly.

"So Mr. Slater just turns, and walks back into the house. Brooke's head breaks the surface again, and she has hair in her mouth and she's spitting water. She pulls herself out of the pool and so does Lila, giggling sashaying towards the drinks; she's acting like nothing's going on. She sips from her dad's bourbon glass. Brooke's just standing there, looking at her, dripping and shivering. Then she raises her hand and slaps the glass out of Lila's hand and it falls and breaks in just about half a million pieces."

He props himself up on his elbow now, watching her face. She makes her features still and blank, looking straight up at the net ceiling.

"And then Lila just looks right back at her, stiff and quiet, and her face gets really ugly and she just turns on her heel and walk right into the house and shuts the door. And me and Brooke walked home in our swimsuits for a mile. And we never got invited over again."

They're both quiet, him looking at her, her looking straight ahead. She steals a glance at the gleam of his skin along the line of his jaw, the cut of his cheekbone. The edge of his downy blonde hair at the neck is darker with moisture, and there's a sheen on his bare shoulder. His eye catches hers, and they both look away, feeling the quick jolt of recognition.

"Brooke does that to you a lot, doesn't she," is all he says at last, and then curiously, she feels a sort of heat and wetness behind her eyes. A stinging, itching, blurring.

"Yeah," is all she can manage to say after a few minutes, but she knows.

She knows he understands. 

He lies back down next to her. It's unbearably hot. The netting flutters a little with a dying breeze, and then stands still as death.

"That's an awful story," he says after a while, and she knows it's true.

"Yeah," is all she can manage, again.

She wipes her neck with a weary hand. She can feel a bead of sweat forming between her breasts, her thighs sticking together. She tries not to think of his hands, those broad, flat palms and musician's fingers curving around the edge of her thin shirt and pulling it up slowly, slowly, over her head.

He groans.

"It's hotter than hell," is all he says abruptly, but she knows they are both thinking about the same thing.

She closes her eyes.

In her memory she remembers the sunlight sparkling erratically on the surface of the strangely blue pool. Brooke's wet, browned skin and cherry red smile. She remembers her own twelve year old voice whispering uncertainly, "Quit it. Quit being like that." She remembers Brooke lifting her chin up high, ignoring her, and diving cleanly under the cool water, coming up like a red arrow or a flower blooming on top of the surface, her hair like a red sea anemone, skin slick with water like an otter.

How afraid she was.

How persistent, unafraid, calm Brooke was. How silent and insistent and honest, standing there in her red ruffled bikini, dripping water on the parquet, looking at the sad, yearning, afraid Mr. Slater with those big, demanding, accepting, unassuming eyes. Not accusing. Just understanding. Proud.

She opens her eyes again. He is watching her from under those half-dropped eyelids, silent, amazed, quiet, torn, afraid. A little sad, yearning. Half shadowed in the dim light coming from the other end of the porch.

She closes her eyes and again and sees the cold, sparkling water. 

She feels that same fear, but there is a surge of excitement, and she feels her heart stop in shock quickly, shock like diving into a cold pool.

This is what Brooke must have felt like, is all that comes to mind.

To be watched like this. To be wanted. 

She opens her eyes again, and blinks twice, as though she is waking up from a dream. He looks away quickly, but her hand goes to his face (as though it is not hers, as though it is separate from her body, moved by its own yearning) and she grasps his jaw lightly and turns his face towards her, his eyes to face hers.

Obediently he looks at her, and both of their hearts stand still, frozen in that paroxysm of time.

She sees the same things there. Want. Need. Yearning, restraint, desire, suffering, control. Something washes over her, intoxicating like power, a sudden want to please, to fulfill, to give something.

She sees Brooke's understanding eyes, locked with Mr. Slater's.

A gift.

Her hand uncertainly leaves his face. She looks at his half-shadowed face, asking nothing, pale with heat and watching her intently.

Her hand moves over his arm, sliding down to his wrist, laying there between them. She moves dizzily ahead, before the fear can catch up with her, and she feels the hard thump of her own heart. 

"Peyton," he whispers suddenly, and she knows he's going to give her a way out and do the nice thing. She sits up beside him, and her other hand quickly clamps over his mouth.

When she finally lifts it, he is silent, watching her with darkly gleaming eyes.

Her other hand moves to his belt buckle and she feels his body suddenly contract and go still. Her elbow brushes against his arm and she is surprised at the hardness of it. Curiously, she touches the muscles under the skin, feeling their steely rigidity, and thinking with a certain abstract horror how he could break her into pieces if he wanted to. 

She goes back to the belt buckle. Her slender fingers rapidly skim it, then hesitantly undo it with a measured precision as though she is completing a minute, detailed task.

A button. Then a zipper. She feels him move, and suddenly shy looks away. He freezes again carefully, and she looks back quickly, fascinated by his reaction. She's never done this without merciful, blinding darkness, without a stereo playing, or without being rushed and pushed, a hand over hers. 

She hooks her hands in the waistband of his jeans, and eases it down. He lifts his hips slightly, and she pulls them down a little further; she watches the muscles on his stomach become rigid at this movement, two sharp lines cutting dizzily downwards at his hipbones, into the cotton that remains the last barrier. 

She bends her head slowly and kisses one of the lines.  She lifts her head in time to see his eyelids fall half closed, and his head fall back, a small sound trapped in the back of his throat. It makes her suddenly tremble. She studies the line of his neck, his clenched jaw.

A gift. The power she wields makes her blood race, her skin electric. The dampness of their skin, the muted shadowy light, the dark stillness of the heat all make this seem like a dream.  She can feel his body responding, stiffly, proudly, uncontrollably. His lips are pale and pressed into a thin line, almost as though in pain.

"Peyton," he says hoarsely.

Her hand slides under the cotton waistband of the boxers. She moves them down slowly, following the cut of those two lines, the shift of muscle under skin and hard-wrought bone, the beauty in the narrowness, lankiness of his hips. Then there is nothing. His eyes flicker open a little, watching her; a calm glance.

He wants to know what she's thinking. A flicker of defiance, of questioning.

She feels the newness of it, of the raw emotion, of her mind suddenly inside his, watching the newness of it to him.

"You're so perfect," she answers then, a little quiet and bewildered.

It's all she can say, because it is simply what resides there, the first true thoguht. The lean, long cut of his torso. The sharp jut of those bones. The proud, new, secret lines of him. The well formed fluidity and smoothness and length of his body extends to all of him, from the jungle cat curve of his back to the chiseled cut of his calf.

Her hot mouth is on his then, an assurance. The rest of him is pressed against her bare stomach. Her hand searches it out. 

He kisses her back slowly, mouth opening gently, to touch the electric tip of his tongue to hers, like children playing a game. She feels every nerve in her body jump.

Her hands play over him, now fierce and determined. Steel under skin and heat and darkness.

She moves over him, her hair a curtain over his head, her damp mouth over his, closing him in. His eyelids, his neck, his forehead, her kisses fall thick like night rain. Her hands are relentless. She hovers over him and dives, miles of skin against skin and damp downy hair and muscles clenching and unclenching jerkily, and she is everywhere and nowhere at once like a ghost tangled in the filmy netting the shadowy darkness. The only sound is their erratic breathing, a groan tearing itself from between his lips, muffled, the half-insane, bewildered gleam in the eye, his face nestled into her neck, pressing down into it, hidden, betraying him. She feels his body suddenly lift violently, a hard, quick movement as though her whole weight  wasn't on him at all, as though she were as light as a shadow. She understood the quick collapse then, and her hands stilled.

They lay there, covered in a sheen of sweat. Tangled in the soft net. His face buried into her neck. Her hands trembling.  Still. Quiet.

The wonder and gratitude, disbelief, surprise in his eyes. The dark, liquid gleam in hers. Head bowed to hide the delirious wonderment at her own throb suddenly present now, waiting, pulsing, knotted, wanting inside her. Both considering the emotion. She says nothing.

This is just him. A gift. She forgets herself in watching the stillness, the contemplation on his face. Eyes looking at her as though he is seeing something for the first time.

Thanking her. Sharing an understanding.

An overwhelming intimacy from the thing she has just done. 

A gift. A bourbon glass breaking into a thousand pieces. Brooke's hair blooming like an anemone. She understands all this now, understands everything, the power she holds, the power of a gift like this.

To give love. Make love. Not just take, not just to be owned.

To own.

There is a sound above them now.

She listens closely to the erratic taps. Pitter-pats. The grass stirring. A cool breeze blowing in.

She pushes aside the netting and steps closer to the screen. She sees him out of the corner of her eye sitting up, assessing the situation, and looks away to provide some privacy. She looks out into the heated darkness coolly, and feels a sudden gust of fresh air hit her. The smell of wet air, clean air, river.

The drops are coming down now, the tapping sound, and she realizes it's begun raining.

Deliriously, she steps towards the porch steps as though blind. She walks out barefoot onto the cool, wet, grass, smelling the sweet scent of crushed green and white nightflowers. She senses him close by, and turns to him, and her eyes are full and her heart is hit by a wave of something strange and heavy, beautiful, and then light, cool, floating.

Happiness. Love. Sadness.

Her hair is wet now, clinging to her face, and he looks up to the sky, grinning. Raindrops slide off the end of her eyelashes.

And she's laughing.


	17. Wednesday

Hey everyone, I'd like to thank you for your support thus far and your contributions to the "end sucky OTH fanfic" movement – you all rock steady. My reviewers – you know who you are – mean a world to me. I've finally finished watching the episodes after the first three (or the rest of the season) and now I see how little this fic and the show even share in terms of plot; but plot's not what I'm getting at really anyway. I'll leave the baby mama's dramas to the Wb.

Keep living in this world. It's a better one.

Luce

Wednesday

He's started working on her dad's old car.

It's a 68 Mustang, red, any teenage boy's wet dream. Enough horsepower under the hood to make you really feel it where it counts when you rev up the engine. Low-slung sharp-cut chassis with curves like a Playboy centerfold and leather bench seats. She likes the way he runs his hands over it like he's making love to it; it makes her giggle. She sits on the front porch and watches him work, content with admiring the sheer architecture of his body it its movements. She twists up her legs and crosses them twice, chin in her hand, rattling the ice cubes in her empty glass.

School has let out for the summer. Girls are lying in their front yards covered in baby-oil on lawn chairs, tanning and drinking iced tea. Lila Slater has resumed her infamous Wednesday night summer pool parties. Brooke has resumed wrecking as many of them as possible. Other people drift in and out at the periphery of her consciousness; Nathan, with that fresh-faced little girl on his arm, Haley, and the other members of the ball team or cheer squad who she's known since first grade. Just people. They've lost their real-ness somehow, compared to him, and the up-close wire-taut silent pull he has on her.

She watches his unhurried, patient hands.

A lot of the time, she examines herself closely and worries, worries about what he sees.

She doesn't like her face. It is too wide, flat, childish looking. The fake doll curls that are her only solution to a head of massively thick, frizzy hair make it even more so. Her mouth is barely a paper-cut, a line, a gash colored in with uncertain lipstick.

The glass she's set on the porch is fogged over, beads of condensation running down. In the frost she writes I love You with her fingers and watches it roll down to the bottom, staining the wood.

He slams the hood shut, sweat gleaming on the back of his neck and temples, and catches her staring. They grin and look away from each other. He rolls a screwdriver from one hand to the other.

"It's hot out here," he says suddenly, in that quiet, matter of fact way of his. "We should get in a pool."

She cocks one eyebrow suspiciously.

"You mean……."

"It's Wednesday," he continues, just as nonchalantly. He wipes his hands on a rug.

"Ok," she says. She's surprised at the simplicity of all this. Her heart beats a little faster though. Her throat rasps a little when she speaks.

"Aren't you a little…..afraid?"

He turns around and looks at her, evaluating her question.

"You don't have to be," he answers, smiling slightly. "I'm with you."  
That's all she had wanted to say in the first place.

The screen buzzes. Testing. Testing. Brooke coming through.

The redhead sits at her desk, whirling around in the chair once. She slams her feet down, and attacks the keyboard; in two seconds, music is blaring through the speakers, hip-hop with a heavy bass beat and a cocky percussion section. She gets up and throws off her shirt, and starts dancing.

Peyton can't dance. She'd like to, but there's too much of her, arms and legs and elbows. All she can do is rock out, but that's hardly dancing. But Brooke, she swivels and coils and curves in and out like a snake, her neat, compactly- muscled little body moving between the rhythms and beats with sharp grace and careless cheekiness, and just the right amount of sex.

The blonde just watches her, putting on makeup in the mirror.

"Video ho," she calls out, and the redhead just dances over and starts grinding on her shoulder. She shrieks and pushes her away, laughing. It feels good, this lightness from the heaviness of being with him, the intensity. "What disaster are you planning for tonight?"

Brooke shrugs, doing a little half-step.

"You coming is disaster enough," she grins, dipping to the floor and winding her way back up again. Her red hair flies in front of her face. "I'm just going to aggravate the situation."

Peyton pushes Brooke's booty away again.

"Brooke I've got to beg you not to."

The other girl looks at her incredulously, and throws her arms above her head, curling her hips sinuously.

"Oh Peyton, I'd love to oblige you, but you know me when I'm drunk. And I've simply got to be drunk."

Peyton puts down her eyeliner and stares at Brooke's Harlem-shaking shoulders.

She opens her mouth and closes it again.

Then, "Why?"

The redhead stops abruptly, facing away from her.

"I think you remember why. Or has it been too long in Lucasland?"

The song ends. There is silence for a moment.

"Brooker….." she starts, then stops.

"You're happy, which is cool, and I'm happy for you," comes Brooke's voice, and the tears glimmer beneath its surface. The lilt of it is stinted.

"Oh Brooke," she says then, moving quickly, wrapping her arms around the smaller girl. "Nothing lasts Brooke, except you; you know that. You and Lila's hatred, which will stand firm until Hell installs ski lifts or the Cubs win the World Series or ….or …Brooke……"

The soft, desperate tone of her voice seems to unlock Brooke. Her shoulders finally slump and she turns around, wrapping her arms tight around her neck.

"Just don't leave me behind, Peyton," she says fiercely. "Leave no cheerleader behind. Leave no man behind, ok? Leave no Brooke. Cause I didn't leave you and you better remember, your ass had better remember-"

"Shhh," the other girl cuts in, patting her back. "Shut up. No one's leaving nobody."

They part. Brooke looks away, a little teary, embarrassed, sullen.

"Ok," she says softly. "Ok."

Then,

"I'm going to make us Tom Collinses. Where's the bourbon?"

She watches Peyton closely.

And Peyton relents, relents to assure her, to prove herself for the last time.

"Under the bed."

He knows she's been drinking the moment he looks at her. She just slams the door shut to the red Mustang, and pops a piece of gum in her mouth. She doesn't look at him.  Her jaw clenches a little. In front of them, Brooke's Bug spits gravel and tears out of the driveway.

"Should she be driving?" he asks quietly, and she feels a little sick. She hasn't even thought of that.

"I'm not sure," she mutters, looking away.

"This isn't a good start," he says, after a pause. She flips down the mirror sharply, pumping a tube of lipgloss. Her slightly unsteady hand fills in her mouth, creates lips colored a feverish, transparent pink. He sighs, and pulls out of the driveway, following the red taillights in front of them.

At Lila's the music is pouring over the hedges, lanterns lit, Jacuzzi full, all patio doors open; the pool glimmers a pale, unearthly blue. A girl wearing only soaked undergarments brushes past them, followed by a boy nervously looking over his shoulder.

"Julia Ashley's cheating on her boyfriend with Kowalski. Kowalski, I think, knows he's going to get his ass kicked before this night is over," narrates Brooke nonchalantly over her shoulder as they weave through the crowd, jostling a few cups. " Dabney Gray caught them last Wednesday in the china cabinet screwing around on the Slater's monogrammed linen, which if it wasn't so unsanitary, would be pretty funny. There's Ginny looking for a duvet to throw up on again, Hollings Wentworth blazed out of her mind on the weed that Mickey Santori's been selling for two months now, and Lila in person – hello Lila – praying she'll get some tonight."

"Fuck you too, thanks for coming," responds the other girl sweetly. They all stand there facing each other, tensed, waiting. Lila cocks her hip like a loaded gun and glances at Lucas over the rim of her plastic cup.

"Good to see you," she mouths silently to him. The music blares close to them over the shouts and yells coming from the patio. She throws Brooke and Peyton a narrow look, and seems to immediately forget them. Brushing past him carelessly, like a ghost, she drops one hand to his leg where they both can see it, and throws a dulcet smile over her shoulder.

He looks at Peyton quickly. Her narrow shoulders are level and stiff. She won't look at him.

"Let's leave," he says simply.

But she turns to him with fevered eyes and her smile is overbright and pink and bourbon loose; she puts her cup down abruptly, a little spilling over the side.

"No, let's stay. You wanted to come; here we are. You wanna see Peyton in action? Have you ever seen Peyton in action? Oh wait, yeah. Last time we were at one of these things we almost fucked in Nathan's spare bedroom."

Brooke suddenly looks away.

"I'm gonna go push Lila in the pool," she says cheerfully, and disappears. They don't even notice.

"Peyton," he says, in a low, quick voice.

"Maybe you got tired of waiting? Cause I'm in the mood now, drunk as hell. Let's do it and do it quick before I change my mind."

"Peyton, let's go," he says firmly, and his hand is on her arm.

"Not even," she says, yanking away. "We haven't gone swimming yet."

He steps away then, silent, dropping his hand. Pulling back into himself. She feels her heart suddenly contract in fear. He's looking at her, but differently. Like he might have looked at anyone. At Lila.

The lights from the pool, flickering, cutting through the night make her dizzy. People push around her. There is heat, sweat, bodies jammed together, beer spilling on her arm from someone's cup. She feels the drops, two, falling off her elbow. She stumbles a little.

She's on the parquet. She thinks of that summer day. Brooke's red anemone hair. Blinding sunlight and Lila's bourbon glass shattering in a thousand pieces, glinting. The water is in front of her and she yanks off her dress with one abrupt motion and her body, like an arrow, pierces the water.

It's silent underneath. Blue. Blind. She opens her eyes for a moment and they sting, cloudy, a leg to her left. She can hear her heart drumming in her ear in the thick, watery silence. She wishes she could stay here forever in this private, cold place.

Her head bursts the surface. A gasp of air. More dizziness.

Then back down underneath.

When she comes back up again, he's gone. She feels heat in her eyes welling up.

She pulls herself out, soaked cotton undergarments cooling on her skin at contact with air. She wrings her hair out and rubs at her eyes. She knows her eye makeup is ringing them like a bruise.

And Lila's there, standing before her, her pale hair hanging to her waist like a perfect piece of silk cut in just the right shape, flanked by a few girls.

"You should come with me," she says sweetly. "I'll get you a towel and an aspirin. You don't look so good."

And she sees herself stumbling along after Lila, as though from a distance. As though she's not in her body anymore, in that tall, lanky bruise-kneed body that's shivering, following obediently. She is just tired, so tired. She has to keep moving to somewhere.

Pressed to Mickey Santori's chlorine damp body on a lawn chair under a citronella lamp, lifting her eyes from his neck, Brooke sees her go.

It's cool in the Slater's spare room. A fan is on, although the air conditioning is freezing. She feels the icy droplets slipping from her hair. She's tired, her mouth thick and dusty with the taste of bourbon. She thinks about lying down.

Lila's standing behind a small lamp, her face cast in shadows. Two girls watch from the door. Dim light and noise are coming in from the hallway, where she can hear people yelling, dancing.

"So how'd you get him to fuck you?"

She hears the words coming from far away almost.

"Excuse me?" she whispers.

"How'd you get him to stick to you?" comes Lila's hard, thin voice again. "Suck his dick? Blackmail? Got his kid? Let him do you up the back? Cause I don't see any reason in hell why he'd want to play house with a skank like you."

She feels vomit welling up in her throat. Lila's face is coming closer. She sees her hands fly out, and feels her back hit something hard. Pain. She stands up weakly, thinking slowly. Too slowly. Lila's palm is biting her face, stinging her skin.

"Cmon bitch, do something. You don't deserve shit! You don't deserve somebody decent like that! You think you're somebody? Then c'mon, prove it! Win for once and for all! Kick my ass Peyton!"

A blow to the side of her face. She feels herself coming alive suddenly, like a sudden roar of blood in her head. She dives for Lila, body curling like a wildcat's, and the impact carries them both into the hallway, scattering the other two girls at the door. They hit the wall. People have stopped and turned to stare; Lila's grabbing at her face, her hair, nails cutting into her neck, but she grabs Lila's shoulders and shoves her hard and they're suddenly in the living room, on the floor, tearing and crashing into things. A girl screams, there's the sound of crystal breaking and the dull thud of blood in her ears.

They wrestle with each other, and she feels Lila's weight come down on her, a fist to the eye. She thinks about curling up, but her arm swings out suddenly and helplessly and in shock, she watches blood coming out of Lila's nose suddenly, warm drops spraying the side of her face. There is a sudden stillness and silence as she sees Lila lifting away from her like magic, seeming to float upwards. She sees Brooke's face behind Lila suddenly as the other girl seems to fly in slow motion towards a wall, hit it, and fall. Brooke seems to be floating down towards her like magic, as though through water, her red anemone hair floating behind her, her eyes and mouth so wide open and scared.

Am I drowning? She thinks.

The music has stopped. There's nothing but silence in her head. She wonders if she's still under the water. She thinks about the sparkle of sunlight, the quiet afternoon, the dance of light in the blue liquid like lightning connecting and then fading, trembling, coiling on the bottom of the pool. Brooke's hands are on her skin now, her voice far away, begging.

There are arms lifting her now. She knows them, the particular and exact feel of them; they are his. She lets her head fall against his chest. Her eye is throbbing, pounding, screaming deeply, and then everything goes black.

When she wakes up again, she sees her driveway in front of her, the edge of it, the grass, a dim porchlight. She feels her stomach heave violently, and her knees scrape the ground suddenly, then vomit in front of her in a puddle on the ground. Her throat constricts, hot and sticky, nauseous. She can feel herself trying to stand up again, his arms catching her, and then everything is black again.

The air is cool. Wet when she breathes it in. Clean.

The room is dark, blinds closed. She sees his head in the periphery of her vision, his face hidden by his arm. He's asleep in a chair with a pillow. She can't tell if it's evening or morning.

She sits up cautiously, wincing. The pain suddenly hits her on her temple like a hammer. She feels her eye throb mercilessly.

The pale girl staring at her from the dresser mirror has a black eye. Her lips are dry and colorless. Her narrow shoulders look bony and bruised, two sets of scratches marking her neck.

Stiffly, she makes her way to the bathroom, forcing herself to drink a glass of water. Her stomach contracts, and for a moment, she leans over the toilet, afraid she'll vomit again. Her hair is damp; he must have washed me off last night, she thinks.

He saw me naked, she contemplates oddly, inappropriately, pointlessly. It's her only thought. A moment passes and she realizes the stupidity of it. Still, she's never been completely naked in front of him.

Her eyes want to tear up, but they are too dry, inflamed. She feels sudden sadness at the loss of this intimacy she can't even remember. She had wanted to be there for that, to watch his hesitant fingers fumble with her buttons, trying to untangle her from her shirt, see his forehead wrinkle a little puzzling over the clasp on her bra. To see him catch his breath, stare a little dumbfounded at the whole picture, trying to take in, to memorize all of her standing before him like that, with nothing to hide behind. To see the questioning, the curiosity, the fascination in his eyes as he reached one hand towards her and lightly traced her bare skin.

All of this she had wanted to be there for. She had missed it.

When she comes back from the bathroom, wiping her mouth, he's awake, and looking at her. She sits on the edge of the bed lightly, brittle, fragile, and is afraid to look him in the eye for fear that she'll see the look. The look that is devoid of caring, intimacy. The look of pity.

She feels his arm slide under her legs and behind her back, picking her up and lying her down. His hands pulling the blanket up to her chest, tucking it a little around her. His hands pushing away the hair from her face. The weight of his body, shifting on the bed, settling down next to her. His fingertips lightly tracing the edge of her jaw.

"You're so beautiful," is what he tells her. "And I wish I had gotten there sooner. I'm so sorry I couldn't protect you. I'm so sorry – Peyton please –"

There is nothing but lightness and silence inside her at that moment, as though she is made of air, in the darkness of that room under those covers she feels…..clear. Delirious. Thankful. Like a child after a hard crying jag, when they're done sobbing, how they feel release. Lightness. Tiredness, but comfort. Calm.

"Shh…." she whispers. "Be quiet. This was all my fault. And I'm sorry too."

They curl into each other, retreating under the darkness of the covers. She can't see anything, only up close pieces, a mouth, his eyes, his neck, their skin pressing together, the dampness of her hair, the throbbing of her bruises, the dark-shaded whiteness of the cotton around them. His heart is beating against her collarbone. He kisses her forehead.

"I know," he tells her.

And somehow, she senses that he does.


	18. Anticipation

The webcam screen flickers, and turns on.

"As a teenage girl, if you are contemplating having sex, there are certain things you should know."

Brooke delicately sets a pair of reading glasses on her nose, and smoothes down her hair in one long stroke of her palm.

There is some blurriness, a temporary pixilation. In the background comes an annoyed response, muffled by the distance.

"Brooke stop skanking around."

The redhead's face comes up close to the camera, grinning, and then fades back again. There is a flash of blonde in the corner, a torso passing by.

"Some things have changed in the last hundred years. For example, you no longer have to get pregnant" (here, there is a ripe pause during which occurs a sarcastic snort and a short offscreen tussle) "or marry the first person you fuck. However, some things have not."

"Hey Dr. Drew, tell 'em what happened to Ginny in ninth grade," comes the disembodied voice from the background. The redhead frowns, and adjusts her shirt to show more cleavage.

"ANYWAY," she snarks, tossing her hair. "The things that have not. The truth is, when you're sixteen and Buddy Jr. has you in the back of his Chevelle (if you're lucky – it could be a Honda and you know what the seats are like in those) the only advice I can give you is going to sound oddly similar to what Mama might've told Joanie 50 years ago on her wedding night: listen closely -"

The sound of a drumroll comes from the background, cut off short before the guitars crash in. The redhead shrieks with laughter.

"Do it again! What was that?"

Peyton's head suddenly bursts into the picture, her mouth wide and laughing, and disappears again.

"The intro to a Sex Pistols song – check it out –"

More muffled laughing. The drumroll comes again. The redhead's face pops into the screen, mouth spilling laughter, eyes bright with cocky mischief.

"Lay on a towel and try not to move too much."

The cymbals clash in the background and two shrieks of laughter go up.

The screen turns off.

He throws himself down on the couch next to her, and they lay there in the blinding afternoon heat that pours molten and gold through the living room windows. The room is dim and full of warm-lit shadows, pure yellow slats of light from the blinds cutting across the carpet beneath their feet. They can see the dust floating in the sunbeams, hear the rattle of the a/c unit, watch the drops of condensation roll off her glass. Time moves like honey, thick and hot and amber.

She moves slightly, groaning, pushing his damp skin away.

"Too hot," she mumbles, and he spreads out lazily on top of her, stretching his arms nonchalantly and muffling her squeals of protest with his shoulder. She squirms under his back, biting his arm, and he rolls off, lying on the carpet by the couch.

She laughs, getting her breath back.

"Now I know why the South is so full of sinners," he tells her. "It's cause we're actually in Hell already. This is it-it's not under the earth, it's between Perry and Magnolia counties."

"Speak for yourself," she replies sweetly, fanning the air uselessly with her hand, pushing back her thick hair. "I'm not doomed to hellfire yet, unless Lila has any pull in the matter. But I'm pretty sure Reverend Maddox won't take her side, not after Mrs. Slater blackballed his cousin from the Junior League."

"Cousin…cousin…isn't that Ginny Lakowski's mom?"

"Geez I dunno. Everybody in this damn town is related to Ginny or Lila. Ever wonder why they're so stupid? Inbreeding. Their family tree looks more like.....a wicker basket," she answers wearily, throwing his wandering hand off her stomach.

He sighs.

"Do I have to wait for snow before I can touch you again?"

She cocks her head as though she is contemplating an answer. But the gaze in her eyes gets lost after a minute or two, and he knows she's thinking about something else now, something private. She turns to him, smudged eyes blinking twice softly.

"Would you come to church with me and Brooke this Sunday?"

She did try to tell Brooke about it once.

They had been in the mall, inside a dressing room at Victoria's Secret.

"I have to get you some nice underwear, now that you're in the position to need them," Brooke had said to her on a Tuesday after seeing the rip in Peyton's bra. A fringe of elastic had been showing through the cotton. She had dragged the tall girl into the pink-silked dressing room, sitting her down on the gilt-edged chair and returning with an armload of frilly, satiny things.

"The lights," Peyton had said when Brooke shut the door behind her.

"What are you babbling about, Dazed and Confused? Take off your shirt."

"The lights are cut just low enough to hide wrinkles. And the pink silk walls – the illusion of opulence, of luxury, all for five dollars in the Sale plastic panty bin. Chinese made bras with stiff wires and enough padding in them to make Texas cheerleaders of us all," she had replied dreamily, peeling off her shirt and bra.

The redhead had rolled her eyes and shoved a bra at Peyton. Transparent net rimmed with rose colored embroidery, stiff dark rose jacquard corseting and a velvet bow in the middle.

"Too French whore. Cocotte."

The next one was pale pink and black laced with satin ribbons.

"And this is better?"

Brooke snatched that one away too and slung another one at Peyton, a creamy beige silk one with a little bit of ecru lace edging.

She had snapped it in the back and stood looking at herself for a moment. Almost pretty, she thought. Plain. He'd like it.

She looked at her breasts, cupped them with her hands and shoved them up, creating forced, creepy cleavage; boobs on a plate, Brooke called that effect, hush puppies on the tray. She let them drop again, wondering when they'd start sagging. She wondered if all girls' nipples were the same color as her own. Things like that, things she'd never say outloud.

Except maybe for one. She had felt the blood drum in her cheeks; she didn't know why. She used to tell Brooke a lot more than that about Nathan – almost everything – but this feels so odd, so sacrilegious, such a breach of ….trust? A secret? But she had to ask, had to know, was going crazy.

"Brooke?" she had breathed, and stopped short, trying to find courage. She shook her head in disbelief at herself.

"Yeah?" the other girl had replied absentmindedly, peacocking a rhinestone studded, flaming pink stuffed bra before the mirror, examining it from different angles.

"Have you ever…..has it ever just happened to you when ….you're not even doing it in any way?"

The redhead had turned quickly, grinning, her eyes dancing with laughter at Peyton's discomfort.

"Has what?" she'd said innocently, snapping a strap.

"You know," Peyton said, her lips forming a silent o, breath drawn in and out of it, the shrug of shoulders, a red flush in the cheeks.

"Oh Holy mother of God Peyton, since when are you such a pre-pubescent? And to answer your question, no, but it's obvious it's happened to you."

The blonde just sank sleepy-smiled in the gilt edged chair then, lolling in her memory, her own bride.

"He just –  held me pressed up against a wall at a certain angle. Clothed. I slipped, caught the edge of his belt. It was just – the things he was saying –just had me trapped there like a ….moth under chloroform, pinned to the …the wall – am I making any sense?"

The redhead had watched her closely, bursting in a shriek of laughter that made the other girl spring up and start choking her with a bra.

"Jesus Brooke!"

"Save the dirty exclamation for your bug collector," her friend had giggled. Then, she'd suddenly become serious. "Are you deadly serious? He didn't even – put any work into it at all?"

"Nuh-uh."

"Wow."

"No joke. I just……thought you might know since you're always reading those stupid Cosmos….if that happens."

"Rarely, I think," Brooke had answered gravely. She'd gone back to admiring the pink stuffed bra before the mirror, but paused thoughtfully.

"That must be something, you know?" she'd said quietly. "To like someone that much, that…just anticipation…..will do it for you? Will kill you?"

"Yeah," Peyton replied, feeling a sort of relief. At laughing again. At seeing Brooke smile. At telling a secret and having a question answered. At not being alone or embarrassed or confused. Which is kind of what Brooke did since we were small, she thinks to herself. Which is what she's been doing for me…..forever.

She gets up then, the boy momentarily forgotten, and gives Brooke a hug. Just a simple, honest, hug.

"What was that for?" the brilliant, compact girl in the screaming pink bra had asked, dimples flashing cheerfully.

"For knowing what to say all the time," Peyton told her. "I mean, even about things that don't matter. You make everything ok."

The other girl had nodded for a second, then simply said,

"Ok"

They both had looked at the pile of underwear and sighed. Brooke picked up a hanger. Then, she'd turned and grinned.

"Can I take the French whore bra?"

She thinks about it relentlessly on some days, days when she's not busy and the world is not falling apart around them from too much stress and drama. Days when everything's alright, everything's just routine.

She tries to remember the things she's learned from other boys. Nathan mostly, the only place she'd ever stayed long enough to learn anything. Things he liked. Things he'd told her to do, or things he's said about it. She remembers amusedly the careful, awkward way he'd handled her sometimes, as though he didn't know what to do with all that anger and yearning she let loose once in a while.

She wonders if he thinks about it all the time. Or what it's like being a virgin for a boy. Or just being a boy.

Or just sex.

The hardest part, she thinks, is that first shocking touch that implies intimacy. Even if it's just reaching over to touch their hand, their wrist after walking and joking around or eating or watching TV or doing any of those normal people things that seem so far removed from the sudden, unnerving silence. If you can just break away from the normal, the world is forgotten, but it always takes a little bit of courage to disturb that complacency and retreat quickly into two private, narrow-focused world between two people's mouths, hands, bodies.

Just a pale, little touch. Sometimes she does it without noticing and then they both become suddenly aware of the situation forced upon them. The first thought that always used to come into her mind was – am I wearing the nice underwear?

Like a trip to the doctor, or any day, just in case you get into an accident and are rushed to the hospital. Preparation or accident.

Peyton's never really been a romantic about these things. Until now, she thinks, until maybe now when she thinks about it so much that preparation isn't important. Past the first point of obsession, into the realm where nothing even really matters, where any moment and any empty room is a sudden, Technicolor possibility.

His lips on hers. Library books. Or stacks of flying geometry papers. The worn carpet of the floor. Or grass stains.

Anything possible, at any moment. No daydreams and stupidities. No concerns about how she will look or where they'll be or if her hair will be perfect or if good music will be playing (or any music at all) or if everything will go well, or if it won't. These were Nathan worries, Nathan preoccupation. Covering imperfections, putting in extra effort, strewing rose petals and wishing for champagne.

With Lucas, she's calm and waiting. Anytime anywhere. Anyhow. None of it all even really matters. She's not preoccupied with whether she'll be perfect looking on that day or be wearing the pretty underwear because she knows he won't care.

The thought fills her with such immense relief and wonder that she falls asleep contemplating it at times.

What it means to be really ready.

It means not having to be prepared at all.

He does come to church with her,  Brooke, and Brooke's boy toy (Mickey Santori) the next Sunday.

Her whole body hums sweetly, clenches when she looks at him in a suit. The stiff edge of the white collar. The sharp cut of the black cloth on his broad shoulders, lanky hips, the soft polish of the wingtips and the perfect knot in the tie. There's something smooth and powerful about it, terrifying.

They're not there because they're religious. They're there because the whole cheerleading team is, and they're having Sunday brunch with Mrs.Lakowski afterwards. Lila's bruised nose and Peyton's black eye are like odd, delicate blooms among all the orchids and daffodils on the other girls' hats and dresses.

They sit in the wooden pews, holding their hymnals and breathing in the Baptist dust. The choir sings angelically, dreamily in the soft light of the morning. They all cast sideways glances at each other, at the ceiling, at the organ, as though they're kindergarteners on a field trip. Lila's white hat droops and curves softly in the front over one eye, only her sharply drawn Mary-Kay Pink Lemonade painted lips showing from one side. Theresa pulls down at her hem perpetually, as though gently surprised that no one else wore a mini. Laney, Jill, Jamie all in a row like china dolls with blonde pageboys neatly tucked behind each pearl-earringed ears. Sterling Sargent and Mary Cady in demure Kate Spade pumps and purses, and large diamonds.

Her and Brooke and Lucas just sit there, and Peyton draws and draws all over her bulletin, Brooke's hand, the announcements paper, the Revival flyer, the tithe envelope, and inside the free Bible she snagged from the front foyer.

He's sitting in the middle of the row, between them and the other girls. Lila's purple and blue flower-bruise turns towards Peyton slowly, one glacier sharp eye looking out from under the hat, creamy pale-pink mouth mouthing the words of the hymn softly, venomously.

And he takes Peyton's hand so the whole row can see it. Takes it and holds it chastely between them, on top of the Bible on her knee.

The white hat turns away sharply.

And Peyton smiles, smiles sweetly, and looks up at the white-draped altar, thinking of things she has no business thinking of in a church. Things she's been thinking about all the time, relentlessly, on days when everything's fine (and after today, even on days when it's not). She watches him from under the fringe of her eyelashes, admiring the strong cut of his jaw offset by the stiff curve of the collar and gleam of the black tie. The perfect gold cufflinks. The slouching insolence of luxury and tailoring. The clean, short fingernails and long, lean, fingers. A slight, delicately smoky hint of cologne.

So she writes it down in loopy, curlicued girl script on the margin of her Bible, writes down what she thinking about, and watches his body stiffen as he reads it, the quick betrayal in his face as he looks away, the sharp pressure of his hand that's almost painful.

She didn't mean to provoke him, especially here, and now.

She just had to say it or she would have …..died….or cracked into a million pieces….her heart had been so full – and she thinks that maybe he gets that.

It seems that he does, because he then picks up the pen and after whispering a few chastising words that humble her a little, he writes back a few quick words that make her heart beat queerly too, and stop for a few seconds, sending the blood to her cheeks.

She rips out the first page of Genesis and puts it in her purse.

She kisses him demurely on the cheek at the door of the Azalea Inn where he drops them off for brunch, and waves goodbye.

She sits and politely sips her iced tea, watching the girls moving like delicate butterflies around her at the table over the rim of her glass. She sees Brooke's little silver flask flash open at her side over her cup of coffee, and sees the gin-bright glitter in her friend's eye. She watches a bee buzzing around the creamy dogwood blossom centerpiece in front of her, hovering hopelessly over the honey dish by the biscuits. She smiles seriously and chats pleasantly with Sterling about how Dabney Gray and her mother had took her to New Orleans, and her mother ended up getting drunk and taking all of them to a transvestite strip show on Bourbon. She joins in the team cheer and joins hands with her moist eyed, dewy faced, sweet smiling cheer-sisters. Brooke's laughter rings beside her, gin-soaked, luxuriant, infectious, slyly sarcastic, cheerfully irreproachable. Golden.

Then she goes home, dazed with love and want and unsatisfied, and reads the small words over and over and over again.

"I feel lost and sick with sin looking at you" reads her small, loopy script. "I think about the things we did. I think about you all the time."

Then, the small print of the page crowding the rest of the page. Genesis the first chapter. Lila's flower bruises. The swell of the organ shattering the roof of the skies and the scent of a million rustling taffeta skirts. Like time waiting, holding its breath, before crashing down with the next words.

His reply on the bottom margin, in small, neat letters.

"So do I. I think about making love to you."


End file.
